
Dr. Scofield at work in the Library at Princeton 



THE 

LIFE STORY 

/ OF 

C. I. SCOFIELD 



By 

Charles Gallaudet Trumbull 

Editor of " The Sunday School Times," 
Author of Taking Men Alive," "Messages for the Morning Watch," 
" What Is the Gosfiel? " etc. 



NEW YORK 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 West 32nd Street 
LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE AND BOMBAY 



Copyright 1920 
by 

Oxford University Press American Branch 



©CLA604304 

<* 

,<^0 NOV 17 1920 



Printed in U. S. A. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. How the Training Began i 

II. Naming Ingalls for the Senate 13 

III. Won to Christ 25 

IV. Daring to Be a Pastor 41 

V. Really Studying the Bible 56 

VI. Victory and Missions 66 

VII. The Reference Bible Begun 75 

VIII. Drudgery and Genius 88 

IX. The Debt to Scholarship 97 

X. Satan's Attacks Defeated 108 

XI. As His Friends Know Him 115 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Dr. Scofield at work in the Library at Princeton • Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Dr. James H. Brookes 36 

First Congregational Church, Dallas, Texas 44 

Deacons and Elders of First Congregational Church, 

Dallas, Texas 48 

Dwight L. Moody 52 

Extract from Dr. Scofield's Personal Bible 60 

Page-proof of Scofield Reference Bible 108 

Dr. Scofield as He Is To-day 116 

Dr. Scofield and Mr. Trumbull 124 



THE LIFE STORY 

OF 

Q L SCOFIELD 



i 

HOW THE TRAINING BEGAN 

A SMALL BOY lay flat on his stomach be- 
fore an open fireplace. He was not 
watching the fire; he was poring over a book. 
It was not a boys' book, either; there were few 
such then, and they were not in the small 
library of a frontier home. He was reading 
Shakespeare. If you had come upon him at 
another time, in the same position and place, 
you would have found it was history. The 
home library held nothing frivolous, and he 
devoured all he found. 

The youngster had a genuine passion for 
knowledge. When he reached the age of twelve 
he began to make a chart of universal history! 
His sisters laughed at him for it; but he kept 
right on. It was not finished in a day or a 



2 



The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



week, that chart; he had to remake it every 
now and then, as he discovered that he had 
left out a whole country or an entire historical 
epoch! But he kept at it until it was finished, 
down to the American Revolution, which was 
his terminus. 

This boy was a great hunter — a hunter 
through the pages of books. When he found 
mention of a certain person in his reading, he 
would hunt through all other volumes that he 
could lay hold of until he had found out more 
about that person. For example, he would 
come across a reference to one Alexander, son of 
Philip of Macedon. Philip — who was he ? And 
where was Macedonia ? There were two things 
he must run down. He kept after Philip and 
Macedonia until he knew something about both. 

The reading of Greek history led to the read- 
ing of Greek literature, — in translation, of course. 
Neighbors of his family learned of his interest 
and desire, and loaned him anything from their 
libraries that was grist to his mill. 

The family were Episcopalians; rectors were 
pretty well-educated men, even in those days. 
The rector of the family of this boy was a cul- 
tured Englishman, a graduate of Rugby and 
Oxford; and he gladly helped the boy to all the 



Haw the Training Began 



3 



good reading that he had. And so, with eager 
mind, the boy kept on digging in books to get 
learning. His unusual habit of hunting out and 
running down information concerning whatever 
he came across trained him in thoroughness. 
He felt that he must get things at first hand. 

The boy's father and mother were true Chris- 
tians, old-fashioned believers. His father read 
the Bible to him and encouraged him to read 
it for himself. The father was not "instructed" 
in the full range of Biblical truth, but he lived 
very much in the Book of Psalms, and loved 
David greatly. And the boy read his Bible les- 
sons, like any other boy in a respectable Chris- 
tian family; but he did not dream that the Bible 
was a book to be studied like other books, and 
he gave it little attention. Yet what a prepara- 
tion he was getting, all unconsciously, in mental 
habits of thoroughness and of verification and of 
first-hand study, all of which make for scholar- 
ship, for the producing, years later, of the Refer- 
ence Bible for which hundreds of thousands now 
love and honor his name! 

Was the mother an influence in the life of this 
boy and man? She died soon after his birth: 
died as a result of bringing him into the world. 



4 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



Perhaps some might think that that answers the 
question in the negative. But as the mother lay 
dying, the new-born baby boy by her side, she 
prayed for him, and asked God that he might 
be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
When the boy grew up he was not told this ; the 
father, with a strict sense of honor, told the 
sisters that young Cyrus must not be told of 
his mother's prayer lest he be unduly influenced 
by it, and enter upon a life-calling simply because 
of sentiment and from a sense of obligation to 
a dying mother's wish. Only after that boy 
had accepted the call to the ministry and had 
become, indeed, an ambassador of Christ was 
he told of his mother's prayer. Yes, God hears 
and answers prayer. 

It was amid the chivalry, the bravery, the 
honor, the old-school standards of gentleman and 
gentlewoman of the South before the Civil War 
that the boy was doing his omnivorous reading 
and forming his study habits. His family then 
were living in Tennessee. He had been born in 
the woods of Michigan, in Lenawee County. 
Pure American Colonial ancestry was his. One 
of the earliest sounds he can remember is that 
of the crash of falling trees in the forest. There 
in that open-air, pioneer life he came to love the 



How the Training Began 5 



woods, and the birds, and animal life of every 
sort. He has never lost that love. He has it 
to-day with an intensity that might surprise 
some. 

In spite of his prodigious love for study, the 
youngster was a real boy, doing the things other 
real boys do. He had four sisters, but was the 
only surviving son in the family, two others 
having died before his birth. One day, when a 
little chap six or eight years old, he felt that his 
many sisters were shamefully neglecting him; 
so " Bub " — as his sisters called him — and a little 
friend decided to run away from home. 

They traveled all day, and at nightfall they 
encountered some wood-choppers who hospi- 
tably asked them to spend the night before their 
great log fire. The following morning, somehow, 
the youngsters did not go farther, but retraced 
their steps, dirty-faced and homesick. Their 
stomachs had a sense of need, too; so they de- 
cided to stop at a farm-house and ask for some- 
thing to eat. This they did at several farm- 
houses, but could not get up courage to ask for 
more than a drink of water, hoping each time 
that there might be an accompanying cookie. 
Nothing but water came their way. 

Finally the two little runaways reached home. 



6 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



No special welcome awaited them, for the sisters 
had decided that they would act as though noth- 
ing unusual had happened. The son of the 
family was quite nonplussed, having expected an 
enthusiastic welcome. 

The biographer is glad to record, however, 
that the boy's father took him on his lap and 
gave him an extra tight hug, much to the boy's 
delight. And years afterward the father told 
him that he had not slept a wink that night 
when his "wandering boy" was not under the 
home roof with him. 

It was August 19, 1843, that Cyrus Ingerson 
Scofield was born. Part of the family moved 
to Tennessee while he was a young boy, and that 
Southern State was his home until he was seven- 
teen. The slavery of that region was of a mild, 
kindly, patriarchal form. Like so many others 
in the South, masters and mistresses and slaves 
loved one another. When, after the war, some of 
these Southern families returned to their homes, 
and found not only no homes, but the farms 
and the very fences burned down by the armies, 
with nothing left but the land itself, the old 
slaves were sometimes found still living there, 
free, but desperately poor. And more than one 



How the Training Began 7 



Southern family mortgaged its land in order to 
continue to take care of its free but needy slaves. 

The men of the Southland with whom young 
Scofield was brought up, while not religious 
as a rule, had a profound respect for anything 
called religion ; they cherished a very high sense 
of honor; they were truthful, and they were 
brave. This led sometimes to the foolish prac- 
tice of dueling; but the standards back of it all 
made a deep impression on the boy. 

Going on with his studies at the family home 
near Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee, he 
was making his plans to pass the examinations 
for entrance to the university. But just at this 
time the Civil War came on and all Southern 
schools were closed. Enlisting at once, though 
only seventeen, he had a four years' course in 
another kind of college than that which he had 
anticipated. He set to work as soon as the 
war was over; and thus it was that he never 
had a formal collegiate or academic educa- 
tion. But how much greater an education had 
he acquired, both before and after those years 
when he had expected to be within college walls, 
than many a college graduate! And from that 
day to this he has never lost his love for study 
and his desire for knowledge. 



8 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



Young Scofield had gone into the Confederate 
Army, as a matter of course, with his boyhood 
friends and associates. Though not seventeen, 
he was a big fellow, tall, strong, though slender, 
and practically never sick in his life. "Raised 
on a horse," he was a perfect horseman, and 
naturally enough he was often called upon for 
orderly work. Learning how to carry vital 
messages, scrawled on a scrap of paper with the 
pommel of a saddle as a writing-desk, while 
shells and bullets were falling, gave him a 
disciplinary training in carrying through diffi- 
cult commissions. His position as orderly, while 
he continued as only an enlisted man through- 
out the war, threw him constantly with the 
officers and others constituting the staff, with 
all the influences and associations that this 
would mean to an impressionable boy. 

Before he was nineteen young Scofield had 
been under fire in eighteen battles and minor 
engagements. The Cross of Honor was awarded 
to him for bravery at Antietam. He was twelve 
miles from Appomattox when Lee surrendered 
to Grant. Dr. Scofield to-day enjoys telling the 
incident of Lee's having said to Grant, after the 
surrender, that inasmuch as Grant's armies had 
cut the Confederates off from their supplies, their 



How the Training Began 



9 



men were in need of food ; and he asked if the 
Northern commander would be so kind as to 
issue an order permitting the bringing of food 
from the Southern supply trains to the men. 
Grant replied that he did not know where Lee's 
supplies were, but he did know where the Union 
supplies were, and he would at once issue an 
order that the Confederate soldiers be cared for 
from the Union supplies — as he promptly did. 
And young Private Scofield was careful to get 
his share of those Union "eats," as he says 
with emphasis. 

His life was not destined to be ended in that 
conflict. He was not twenty-two when the war 
was over; and he went to live in St. Louis, the 
home of his eldest sister. She had married into 
one of the best Creole or French families of the 
South; and there the young fellow was plunged 
into the French society of that great city. 

St. Louis was then the great fur market of the 
world for original, uncured fur. And the rapid 
growth of the city was making millionaires of 
some of the French people there. Scofield read 
and studied French, which was freely used as 
the language of Creole society in St. Louis in 
those days; he still uses the language in his 



10 



The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



reading. The influences of the European, ex- 
tremely formal social life of that day were 
entering into his impressionable years also. 

His sister's husband, a man of wealth and 
high social standing and leadership, told young 
Scofield that he would back him in any line of 
profession or life-work he might choose to take 
up. They talked over different professions to- 
gether, and it came out that the practice of law 
seemed the most attractive. Having settled 
this, the question arose as to how the young 
man would prepare for his coveted life-work. 
The brother-in-law had told him to call upon 
him for whatever assistance he needed. It was 
a time of test and of real struggle. But the 
younger man met it by telling his brother that, 
while he thanked him ten thousand times for 
his generous offer to help, he believed it was best 
for him to work things out for himself and pro- 
vide for his own education and support. He 
wanted to fight his own way; and he did so. 

In order to get together money for his legal 
education, he started in at once as a clerk in an 
office for the examination of land titles — a line 
closely related to the law. This was a still fur- 
ther training of his mind for searching out things, 
and had its place in God's later plans for his life. 



How the Training Began 11 



After less than two years' work in this office, his 
devotion to this technical branch resulted in his 
appointment as chief clerk, being chosen from 
among the considerable number of young men 
in the office. This gave him a good salary. 
Now he made his plans to enter upon the 
actual study of law in one of the best law 
offices in St. Louis. That city had then, as 
for many years, a remarkably strong bar. It 
was a treat for the young law student to go 
into court and hear the able, brainy men of 
that day. 

While still pursuing his law studies, and be- 
fore being admitted to the bar, a very exten- 

! sive and involved lawsuit in connection with 
the landholdings in Kansas of his brother-in- 
law's family was begun; and the family asked 

; young Scofield to let them put the matter into 
his hands for his personal charge and direction. 
He protested, saying that he had not the experi- 

I ence or ability to undertake this. They would 

i not accept his declination, but insisted upon his 
assuming the responsibility in their behalf, tell- 
ing him to retain the best lawyers he pleased to 
insure the necessary legal skill. Yielding to 
their urgent request, he went at the task in his 
old way of studying things out and making sure 



12 The Life Story of C. 1. Scofield 



of bringing all the facts together. Then he put 
this material into the hands of his lawyers, — 
and among the brilliant lawyers retained by 
him for this great case was John J. Ingalls. 
Scofield's lawyers won the case. 



II 



NAMING INGALLS FOR THE SENATE 

THE life of C. I. Scofield up to the time 
of his conversion is chiefly of interest as 
having fallen within times of permanent his- 
toric import in which he bore a characteristically 
American part. 

The Scofield family is well-born and is traced 
back for centuries to its English forebears. 
Indeed, one of the Scofield ancestors fought a 
duel with that ancestor of the poet Byron who 
was called "the wicked" Lord Byron. And in a 
volume noted as Oxford Grants I, now in the 
Herald's College, London, is found the following: 
"To All and Singuler etc.: Forasmuch as 
Cuthbert Scofeld of Scofeld in Countie of Lan- 
caster, Esquire, sonne and heire of James 
Scofeld, well borne and descended of worthy pro- 
genitors such as have of longe tyme used and 
boren armes as apt and significant tokens of 
their race and gentry, . . . 

"In witnesse whereof, I the said Norroy 
Kinge of Armes have heereunto subscribed my 

13 



14 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



name this sixt day of March, in the yere of our 
Lord God 1582 and in the 25 yere of the reigne 
of our most gracious souveigne Lady Queen 
Elizabeth." 

As you enter the doorway of "Greyshingles," 
the Scofield home at Douglaston, Long Island, 
you see on the wall at the right a quaint pen- 
and-ink sketch of an old English building, show- 
ing moat, and bridge, and heavy oaken door. 
The Scofield coat of arms is there, and the 
sketch bears the inscription: 

"Scofield Hall, erected 1550, Rochdale, Lan- 
cashire, England, from a sketch in Raines 
MSS., British Museum." 

Thus of Colonial and Revolutionary ancestry, 
so strongly Puritan that, from Daniel Scofield the 
immigrant (1639) to and including himself, every 
man and woman in the chain of descent bore a 
Bible name — usually chosen from the Old Tes- 
tament — he was born, very properly for an 
American boy, in the depths of a Western 
forest. For the West was in its winning, and 
the grandfather and father of that woodland 
baby owned large acres of primeval trees in 
Lenawee County, Michigan. They had built a 
dam across the Raisin River and erected a saw- 
mill; but so much was it still a wilderness that 



Naming Ingalls for the Senate 15 

little Scofield's grandmother had to defend her 
very life against a drunken Indian, and his 
father's unerring rifle slew a wild-cat that was 
bearing to her hungry brood a baby stolen 
from a frontier crib. Into such a life little 
Scofield was born. 

And then came the first of the dramatic 
changes of which young Scofield's life was so 
full. A removal took the boy of the Michigan 
settlement to pass, as it turned out, the forma- 
tive years of his early life in the absolutely 
contrasted life of middle Tennessee during the 
last years of the slavery regime — absolutely 
contrasted, and yet no less intensely and char- 
acteristically American. It was among a 
Whig aristocracy, educated, wealthy (for that 
time and region), of easy, hospitable life, and 
of a plain democratic commonalty, honest, 
truthful, brave; who owned few slaves but 
tilled the soil in manly independence, keeping 
in their fat pastures blooded horses and herds 
of high-bred cattle. It is safe to say that no 
people ever surpassed these in the great primi- 
tive virtues of courage, integrity, and kindli- 
ness. Their accomplishments were to ride 
and shoot, and their intellectual interests were 
politics and sectarian religion. 



16 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



The Civil War was the next dramatic chapter 
in his life. Those years in an atmosphere created 
by the great personalities of Lee and Jackson 
furnished an indelible lesson in his training. 
And then came his removal to St. Louis and 
his preparation for the profession of law, begun 
by disciplinary training in a land office, as has 
been narrated, and hastened by the great law- 
suit of his brother-in-law's family, of which 
he was asked to take charge. 

It became necessary for young Scofield to 
remove to Kansas, where the land interests in- 
volved in the Loisel family lawsuit were situated. 
Here he was urged to let his name be offered for 
admission to the bar; he underwent the severe 
ordeal of those days, being examined by the 
three lawyers in open court to whom his exam- 
ination was formally assigned, and also being 
asked questions, as was the custom, by any 
judges and members of the bar present. Having 
passed this stiff examination, he was, when about 
twenty-six years of age, admitted to the bar. 

Then the people of Atchison, Kansas, elected 
him to the State legislature. After two years 
of experience as a young legislator, serving as 
chairman of its Judiciary Committee, he re- 
moved to Nemaha County, where the Loisel 



Naming Ingalls for the Senate 17 

lawsuits were pending, and here he was again 
and at once elected to the legislature. 

It will be remembered that the long and 
acrimonious discussion of the attempt to include 
the Territory of Kansas within the number of 
States in which slaves might be held had brought 
into that Territory an unusual number of the 
ablest young men from both the North and the 
South — a fact which invested life in the young 
State with peculiar interest. Every possible 
issue was discussed down to the final word, 
though the heat engendered by the slavery 
discussion had ceased with the ending of the 
Civil War. 

Among the ablest and best-trained of the 
young men who had been drawn to Kansas 
by the slavery agitation was John James 
Ingalls, of Atchison, graduate of Williams 
College, a natural wit and orator, and with 
whom young Scofield was associated in the 
Loisel land case. 

Then occurred an event that arrested in a 
singular degree the attention of the nation. 

The senior United States Senator from Kan- 
sas, Samuel C. Pomeroy, had become notorious 
through land-corruption deals. His term in the 
Senate was expiring, and he was a candidate 



18 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



for re-election. Young Scofield, like some others, 
was satisfied that Pomeroy was buying votes. 
A small but earnest anti-Pomeroy element of 
State legislature men were holding a series of 
meetings in a hall in the State capital, Topeka. 
Their leader came to Scofield one afternoon and 
asked him bluntly where he stood on Pomeroy' s 
re-election. 

"Against Pomeroy/' was the prompt reply. 

The anti-Pomeroy man was interested, and 
said he wanted to talk freely with Scofield. 
Then he asked the question, "Have you a man 
to nominate in his place?" 

"Yes," came the reply again: "John J. Ingalls. 
But," added Scofield, "I don't want to see 
Ingalls nominated, just to have him defeated." 

At this the anti-Pomeroy man answered 
earnestly, "I know that Pomeroy will be de- 
feated. Will you, without asking any questions, 
take my word for this?" 

Scofield thought it over for a moment, and 
said he would. He wired to Ingalls to come 
over to the capital, which was done by engaging 
a special train to bring him. Immediately upon 
his arrival he and Scofield conferred together. 
Scofield laid the facts as fully before his older 
friend as he could. Ingalls was impressed, and 



Naming Ingalls for the Senate 19 



after earnest conference he asked the younger 
man, "What do you advise?" 

"You ought to do it/' came the reply. 

Ingalls said frankly that he did not believe 
his election was possible under the circum- 
stances ; but he was ready to follow the counsel 
of his friends; and he authorized him to say 
that he, Ingalls, would accept the anti-Pomeroy 
nomination. 

The anti-Pomeroy leader had told Scofield 
that their group were going to remain in ses- 
sion through the night preceding the election, 
not leaving the hall, and even having their 
breakfasts brought in, in order to see the 
matter through. At one o'clock in the morn- 
ing Scofield entered the hall where they were 
meeting, with Mr. Ingalls on his arm. Ingalls, 
a fine-looking, tall, slender man, then made 
a powerful address for clean politics in Kansas. 
The entire group had their breakfast together, 
and went over in a body to the House of 
Representatives. 

The Pomeroy cohort had already assembled. 
A little later the senators marched in. The 
Lieutenant-Governor, as was the custom, pre- 
sided. 

Mr. Pomeroy was nominated to succeed him- 



20 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



self as Senator of the United States, in a speecn 
in which his "great services" to the State of 
Kansas were fully rehearsed. 

Then Senator York, the leader of the anti- 
Pomeroy forces, rose to his feet, deathly white. 
Scofield looked at him, and was afraid he would 
not be able even to use his voice, so overcome 
by emotion did he seem. But in a moment, to 
the utter amazement of all who heard him, he 
said: "Mr. President, I rise to second the nomi- 
nation of S. C. Pomeroy." [Representative 
Scofield was not then a converted man, and he 
decided then and there that after the meeting 
he would take the senator outside and thrash 
him.] "But/ 5 went on Senator York, reaching 
to his hip pocket, and drawing out a large 
bundle of something, "not to a seat in the 
United States Senate, but to a cell in the Kan- 
sas State Penitentiary at Leavenworth/' He 
then called to his side one of the boy pages of 
• the legislature, and continued: "Mr. President, 
I am sending you by the innocent hand of this 
boy seven thousand dollars in greenbacks that 
were handed me last night by S. C. Pomeroy for 
my vote." 

The bundle of money was carried up to the 
desk of the Lieutenant-Governor, and there, in 



Naming Ingalls for the Senate 21 



the presence of all, it was laid in plain sight 
upon a book. There was a silence like death 
over the entire hall of representatives. 

In that strange silence Scofield rose and 
nominated John J. Ingalls to the United States 
Senate. Member after member rose to second 
the nomination. 

The Lieutenant-Governor, his face tense with 
excitement, asked if there were any other nomi- 
nations. None was offered. And then an amaz- 
ing thing happened. The vote was taken; and 
every vote cast was for John J. Ingalls, Even 
the man who had nominated Pomeroy voted 
for Ingalls ! And many another legislator there, 
with Pomeroy' s money in his pocket, dared not 
do otherwise than repudiate his man and come 
out in the solid vote for decency and honesty. 

There was another dead silence, as the pre- 
siding officer rose and, in a shaking voice, said: 
"Every ballot has been cast for John J. Ingalls. 
I hereby declare him duly elected Senator from 
Kansas for the United States." 

There were shouts of "Ingalls! Ingalls!" 

"Mr. Scofield, do you know where Mr. In- 
galls is ? " asked the Lieutenant-Governor. " Can 
you produce him?" 

"I think I can, sir," answered young Scofield, 



22 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



"if the house will continue in session for twenty 
minutes. " 

He disappeared, and in five minutes he was 
back with Mr. Ingalls. Dazed by the sudden- 
ness and utter unexpectedness of the event, Mr. 
Ingalls made a brief address of acceptance of 
the nomination, amid the cheers of senators and 
legislators. And for eighteen years from that 
time Ingalls served in the United States Senate, 
through successive re-elections. 

It is not surprising that General Grant, then 
President of the United States for his second 
term, appointed C. I. Scofield United States 
Attorney for the District of Kansas. That in- 
cluded not only the entire State of Kansas, but 
also what is now much of Oklahoma — then 
Indian Territory. The young legislator was 
the youngest United States attorney at that 
time in the United States — scarcely thirty years 
old. And the office that he held was particularly 
important, because the United States was then 
removing the roving Indians of the plains to 
fixed reservations, which meant unusual work 
for the District Attorney's office. 

Among other things that the Government 
instructed United States District Attorney 



Naming Ingalls for the Senate %3 

Scofield to do was to stop certain men who were 
taking whisky into Indian Territory and selling 
it to the Indians. Scofield secured an escort of 
cavalry and went after these men. He would have 
been shot down instantly by them if they could 
have done this. But he rounded up some of the 
worst men in this law-breaking liquor business, 
and brought them back to Leavenworth. 

At the trial, necessarily most of the District 
Attorney's witnesses were Indians — and Indians 
who could not speak a word of English. It was 
a strange scene that went on in the court-room, 
as an uncouth-looking half-breed interpreted for 
the Indians. But the case proceeded, the de- 
fence for the liquor men trying in vain to break 
down the testimony of the Indians, and the 
Indians themselves made a favorable impres- 
sion by their evident honesty, and respect, and 
reverence for the Great Spirit when the ques- 
tion of the nature of an oath came up, and it 
ended by the conviction of the liquor men. 

When, later in the day, Scofield went to the ■ 
lodgings where he had had his Indian witnesses 
entertained, he found the leading one, a stately 
chief named "Powder Face," squatting on a 
bed. As the District Attorney entered the 
room, the Indian quickly raised his left hand 



24 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



high over his head, with his right hand patted 
his heart, and smiled — and a smile is a very- 
rare thing to see on the face of an Indian. 
What it meant was, "I love you." And the 
interpreter explained to Scofield, " Powder Face 
would die for you now, after making that sign. 
It is a pledge of eternal friendship." 



Ill 



WON TO CHRIST 

THE political life into which young Dis- 
trict Attorney Scofield now found himself 
plunged, by virtue of his Federal office and 
work, involved frequent trips from Kansas to 
Washington, and associations and activities that 
were not entirely to his liking. The profession 
of law was his life choice; his political work was 
interfering with that. He had, indeed, become 
very much dissatisfied with his own life; he was 
not living up even to his own ideals, uncon- 
verted man though he was. So after two years' 
service as United States District Attorney he re- 
signed the office and returned to St. Louis to 
practise law. 

The drinking, loose ways of the political crowd 
upon whom Scofield had now turned his back 
had not been to his liking, nevertheless he him- 
self had been living not at all as a Puritan. 
The moderate use of liquor was a common- 
place in the life in which he moved and had 
been reared. He drank as he pleased, and, 

25 



26 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



like most men who drink "in moderation," he 
soon drank too much. 

From 1865 until 1879 his life was intense, 
largely a life of combat in courts and politics 
which not seldom became extremely embittered. 
He says himself of that period: "It must not 
be forgotten or suppressed that the habit of 
drink during this period became fastened upon 
me, for it is due to my adorable Lord that His 
perfect and instantaneous deliverance of me 
should be made known, as I have testified again 
and again in meetings. " 

After taking up again in St. Louis the prac- 
tice of law, a young man of about his own age, 
Thomas S. McPheeters, became one of his in- 
timate friends. McPheeters was the son of a 
well-known minister and godly man of great 
influence, who was pastor of the First (Southern) 
Presbyterian Church of that city. Another son 
of that father is Prof. William M. McPheeters, 
of the Southern Presbyterian Theological Semi- 
nary at Columbia, S. C. 

Scofield's father and mother had been true, 
old-fashioned believers. He was not. He had 
gone to Sunday-school as a boy because he was 
made to go. He hated to go; it made little im- 
pression upon him ; and he learned little there. 



Won to Christ 



27 



He heard many a sermon, but none that affected 
him in any way until after his conversion. 

In his St. Louis law office, one day, Mc- 
Pheeters came to see him. After talking a 
while, McPheeters got up to go. With his 
hand upon the door-knob, he turned and faced 
Scofield, saying: "For a long time I have been 
wanting to ask you a question that I have been 
afraid to ask, but that I am going to ask now." 

"I never thought of you as 'afraid,'" said 
Scofield in hearty friendship. "What is your 
question?" 

"I want to ask you why you are not a Chris- 
tian?" came the unexpected reply. 

Now Thomas McPheeters was an outspoken 
Christian himself, utterly devoted to his Lord, 
and a real soul-winner, at the same time a so- 
ciety man in the best sense of that word, min- 
gling with the best social life of his day. He and 
Scofield had much in common — except Christ. 

The lawyer replied thoughtfully: "Does not 
the Bible say something about drunkards hav- 
ing no place in heaven? I am a hard drinker, 
McPheeters." 

"You haven't answered my question, Sco- 
field," the other man came back. "Why are 
you not a Christian?" 



28 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



"I have always been a nominal Episcopalian, 
you know," said Scofield, "but I do not recall 
ever having been shown just how to be a Chris- 
tian. I do not know how." 

Now McPheeters had his answer. He drew 
up a chair, took a Testament out of his pocket, 
and read passage after passage from the pre- 
cious Good News, plainly telling his friend 
how to be saved. "Will you accept the 
Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour?" he 
asked. 

"I'm going to think about it," said Scofield. 

"No, you're not," answered McPheeters. 
"You've been thinking about it all your life. 
Will you settle it now? Will you believe on 
Christ now, and be saved?" 

The logical-minded, clear-thinking lawyer 
liked clean-cut statements and unequivocal ques- 
tions and answers. After a moment's thought 
he looked his friend full in the face, and said 
quietly, "I will." The two men dropped down 
on their knees together. Scofield told the 
Lord Jesus Christ that he believed on Him as 
his personal Saviour, and before he arose from 
his knees he had been born again: there was a 
new creation, old things had passed away, be- 
hold, all things had become new. Thomas S. 



Won to Christ 



29 



McPheeters had been used of God to lead 
C. I. Scofield to Christ. 

An old friend of McPheeters, Mr. J. L. Wood- 
bridge, of Pueblo, Colorado, upon reading this 
incident, has written to the biographer: 

"It was a privilege to know Mr. McPheeters, 
or Tom, as his friends knew him. Big in body 
and soul, he carried the Saviour about with him 
all the time; or, rather, the Saviour carried him. 
I know the account you give is accurate because 
it is just the way he would go about it. It 
seemed as if he could approach any man on 
earth on the subject with perfect confidence. 
His life was all the Christian life, in business as 
elsewhere. Welcome everywhere, to all classes, 
! his genial frankness and bonhomie swept every- 
thing before it. We were fellow commissioners 
i to the General Assembly of the Southern Presby- 
terian Church at Nashville in 1904, and in his 
speeches there his great magnetism affected the 
large audiences just as it did individuals. His 
influence, perpetuated through Dr. Scofield and 
thousands of others, will never die." 

There have been all sorts of inaccurate and 
misleading stories of the conversion of Dr. 
Scofield. Passing from mouth to mouth, some of 
these have gained currency, and, as he says him- 



30 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



self, he long ago gave up hope of denying or cor- 
recting them. But these facts have been given 
here as they actually occurred, and as Dr. 
Scofield wishes them to be known. Shortly be- 
fore this chapter of the Life Story^went to press in 
its serial publication, the writer received a letter 
from Dr. Scofield that he gladly incorporates 
here, so that many may rejoice in the marvel of 
its testimony: 

"Such successes as I achieved in my life in the 
world of selfish aspiration might easily be made 
so prominent in my life story as to leave my con- 
version an event like the others. I owe it to the 
Lord and to my boundless indebtedness to His 
grace to do what I may to correct the notion that 
it was a brilliantly successful man who, in my 
person, came to Christ. 

"Great opportunities had indeed been given 
me, and for years I made them my own. But 
slowly, insidiously, the all but universal habit of 
drink in the society and among the men of my 
time overmastered me. It was not a victor in the 
battle of life — though victories had come to him 
— but a ruined and hopeless man who, despite 
all his struggles, was fast bound in chains of his 
own forging. He had no thought of Christ 



Won to Christ 



31 



other than a vague respect, the survival of a 
family influence. There was no hope that in 
a church some time he might hear and believe 
the Gospel, for he never went to church. 

"And then Jesus Christ took up the case. 
Men were beginning to turn away from him, 
but the Lord of glory sought him. Through 
Thomas McPheeters, a joyous, hopeful soul, 
Jesus Christ offered Himself to that wreck. 

"It was a Bible conversion. From a worn 
pocket Testament McPheeters read to me the 
great Gospel passages, the great deliverance 
passages, John 3 : 16; 6:47; 10:28; Acts 13 138, 
39, and the like. And when I asked, like the 
Philippian jailer of old, 'What must I do to be 
saved?' he just read them again, and we knelt, 
and I received Jesus Christ as my Saviour. 
And — oh! Trumbull, put it into the story, put 
it big and plain: instantly the chains were 
broken never to be forged again — the passion 
for drink was taken away. Put it ' Instantly,' 
dear Trumbull. Make it plain. Don't say:' He 
strove with his drink-sin and came off victor.' 
He did nothing of the kind. Divine power did 
it, wholly of grace. To Christ be all the glory. 
" Yours in His love, 

"C. I. Scofield." 



32 The Life Story of C. I. Scojietd 



The writer of this life story knows too well 
that no Christian ever, under any circumstances, 
"strove with his sin and came off victor," to 
suggest any such false interpretation as that for 
the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ in the life 
of this now veteran saint. The secret of Dr. 
ScofiekTs " Victorious Life" is the same and 
only secret of the Victorious Life of every be- 
liever, wherever such victory is experienced : he 
"let go, and let God"; he did not try to add 
his efforts to God's finished and perfect work. 
He yielded and believed: and the Captain of 
his Salvation, instantly making him more than 
conqueror, led him in triumph. 

Lawyer Scofield was saved, and he knew it. 
For Thomas McPheeters knew the Gospel, and 
he had made it perfectly plain to his friend. 
There was no vagueness or uncertainty in Mc- 
Pheeters' appeal, nor in Scofield's acceptance. 
From that day to this he has never had any 
doubt that he was at that time, in the city 
of St. Louis, at thirty-six years of age, in the 
year 1879, DOrn again through faith in the Son 
of God. 

Christ came in, and drink went out. The 
miracle of the Victorious Life was instantly 



Won to Christ 



33 



wrought for him and in him: he lost all desire 
for drink then and there. God took it. It 

was gone. 

The man who has passed from death into 
life, from bondage into freedom, from defeat 
into victory, cannot help telling about it. More 
than once Dr. Scofield, after he had entered the 
ministry and was giving his whole life to Chris- 
tian service, testified to his deliverance from the 
drink habit. And years later, when he was 
D. L. Moody's home pastor at Northfield, Mr. 
Moody, then his devoted friend, was led to 
speak to him about this, and advised against it. 
Mr. Moody said he had noticed that Dr. Sco- 
field would from time to time, in his public 
messages, tell of his former bondage to drink 
and of his deliverance, and he said he believed 
he ought not to do this except in revival meet- 
ings where drinking men might be present: that 
any sin of that sort was in the past, under the 
blood of the Lord Jesus, and now solely a mat- 
ter between God and Scofield, and not for the 
general public. 

Dr. Scofield appreciated Mr. Moody's feeling, 
and, in giving full recognition to the suggestion, 
replied that of course Mr. Moody would recog- 
nize that he must leave himself in the hands of 



34 The Life Story of C. L Scofield 



the Holy Spirit as to this, for whatever guidance 
He might indicate. 

A short time after the conversation Dr. Sco- 
field was speaking at Northfield, addressing an 
audience of about eight hundred Northfield stu- 
dents. And during the course of his address he 
was strongly led to give the testimony of his 
own deliverance, years before, from the power of 
drink, through the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. God used his testimony that day mighti- 
ly and blessedly in the lives of the students. 

After the service was over, Mr. Moody went 
to Dr. Scofield and said, with characteristic 
impulsiveness and intensity: "Scofield, you take 
the advice of the Holy Spirit hereafter, and not 
of D. L. Moody." 

After the young lawyer's conversion, Mc- 
Pheeters, now infinitely more his friend in 
Christ, brought him at once into association 
with strong Christian men. The St. Louis 
Young Men's Christian Association secretary at 
that time was Walter C. Douglas, the well-known 
Y. M. C. A. worker who was later the general 
secretary at Philadelphia, and who has had a 
long career of useful Christian service in this 
field. Douglas himself had been a lawyer, and 



Won to Christ 



35 



after conversion had gone into Y. M. C. A. 
work; and he had come under the influence of 
Dr. James H. Brookes, the remarkable preacher, 
pastor, and Bible teacher of St. Louis. Scofield 
quickly got into Christian work and Y. M. C. A. 
service, and he was fortunate in securing the 
personal friendship of Dr. Brookes early in his 
Christian life. He got into the habit of going 
to the home of that Spirit-guided and illumined 
Bible teacher, and there studying the Bible 
under his direction. 

There were probably few if any men of the 
last fifty years in North America who did as 
much to influence and guide the Bible study 
and Christian life of the sound Christian leaders 
of our generation as James H. Brookes. He 
was peculiarly blessed of God in making plain 
dispensational truth and the great fundamentals 
of the prophetic study of God's Word. To-day, 
more than forty years after Dr. Scofield first 
came under that remarkable man's influence, he 
says of him: 

"James H. Brookes was the greatest Bible 
student I have ever known. His great strength 
lay in the fact that he held truth in balance — 
he always balanced whatever truth he was giv- 
ing by some other truth; that is, whether he 



36 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



mentioned the other truth or not, he held it at 
least in his mind over against the truth that 
he was giving, and thus was kept from unbal- 
anced or false emphasis. 

"Dr. Brookes was an amazing blessing to me, 
but never more than in telling me this: ' There 
is no such thing in the Bible as an abstract prop- 
osition. Everything in the Bible is meant to 
be turned into life. It must first of all be 
grounded in doctrine. There is such a thing 
as experience which is real but which is not 
founded on Scripture; then it becomes either 
fanatical or a discouragement. Therefore, we 
are always to interpret experience by Scripture 
— never Scripture by experience. There is al- 
ways in Scripture a doctrinal basis, and there 
is always in Scripture an account of an experi- 
ence based on that doctrine; and this account 
is perfectly accurate because it is inspired/ " 

A St. Louis man, C. E. Paxson, who made 
young Scofield's acquaintance at the Y. M. C. A. 
soon after his conversion, was seated in his 
own office one day with a brand-new Bible 
before him, which he was marking. Scofield 
came in, and seeing what he was doing, ex- 
claimed, with consternation: "Why, man, you 
are spoiling that fine new Bible!" 



Dr. James H. Brookes 
Brookes was Dr. Scofield's first Bible teacher. Of him to-day he 
"He was the greatest Bible student I have ever known." 



Won to Christ 



37 



For answer Mr. Paxson pointed him to the 
place in the eighth chapter of Acts where he 
had underscored the fifth verse, reading: "Then 
Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and 
preached Christ unto them." This he had con- 
nected by a light line with the eighth verse, 
which he had also underscored, reading, "And 
there was great joy in that city." Scofield saw 
the point at once, and became an advocate of 
Bible-marking. Many years after he was ac- 
customed to greeting his friend Paxson with the 
words: "Here is the man who first taught me 
to mark my Bible." 

When the young convert and Christian worker 
looked around for a church home, he was led 
to join the Pilgrim Congregational Church, of 
which Dr. C. L. Goodell was pastor, making 
this choice because of the warmth of personal 
friendship that he had found in Dr. Goodell. 
Goodell and Brookes were great friends, and 
Dr. Brookes told Scofield that he believed he 
had done well in connecting himself with Dr. 
Goodell' s church, "For," he said, "he is the great- 
est pastor I ever saw; and I'll see that you get 
the Bible teaching you need." 

A man of Scofield's intensity, and natural 



38 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



leadership, and love of activity and expression 
could not keep still in his Christian life. He 
soon got to leading meetings, and even to preach- 
ing a little. He felt that the hand of the Lord 
was upon him. 

His Y. M. C. A. friend, Walter Douglas, intro- 
duced the young converted lawyer to the presi- 
dent of one of the railroads that came into 
St. Louis, and asked the railroad man if Sco- 
field might hold religious meetings for railroad 
men at East St. Louis, at the "bridgehead." 
This was where many trains and different roads 
came in before crossing the bridge to St. Louis 
proper; it was a locality infested with saloons, 
and with numbers of railroad men loafing around 
waiting the opportunity to take their own trains 
across. 

The railroad president gave his cordial per- 
mission for the holding of such meetings; but 
those who knew of it were skeptical — the men 
wouldn't come, they said. 

Scofield tried his hand at it, however, and 
he soon found that he could not make much 
headway in getting a hearing among the roister- 
ing, indifferent railroad men of that day. About 
that time he was led to befriend a railroad man 
who was sick. He saw to it that the sick man 



Won to Christ 



39 



had a good doctor, and whatever else was 
needed. This Jim Turner, a freight conductor, ■ 
not only found his health under Scofield's loving 
ministry, but he found his Saviour also. Then 
he went back to the tracks with his new friend 
Scofield; he would stand alongside and shout out a 
testimony for Christ, telling his railroad pals that 
they must listen to the man who had come to bring 
them a message. Things went better now, and 
Jim himself was soon made a railroad Y. M. C. A. 
secretary — a novelty for those days. 

With a vision ahead of his time, Scofield saw 
the need of a building for railroad men where 
they could write their letters and sit around 
and take things easy inside decent rooms instead 
of having to frequent the barrooms for warmth 
while waiting for their trains. This sugges- 
tion was brought before the railroads; they 
saw the wisdom of it and acted upon it. The 
result was that a railroad Y. M. C. A. building 
was put up then and there, and Scofield increas- 
ingly won the confidence of the "men of steel." 

He continued to visit the sick men and the 
families of others; and now, when he preached 
Christ among them, he won souls. 

It was in the spring of 1882 that the super- 



40 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



intendent of Congregational Home Missions for 
the Southwest, who had been watching Scofield's 
work, came to him and told him of a little 
church that had been organized in Dallas, Texas, 
and that was going to pieces because it had no 
minister. Would Scofield give up the practice 
of law, and go to Texas and take charge of that 
church ? 

This was a new proposition indeed! Mr. Sco- 
field prayed about it, and he kept on praying. 
Some months went by. The Home Missions 
Superintendent came again and urgently re- 
newed his invitation: the church, he said, was 
losing the few members it had because of the 
lack of any pastoral head. 

"Yes, I'll go," remarked Scofield emphatically; 
and as soon as he could arrange his affairs prop- 
erly he gave up his St. Louis law practice and 
went straight down to the Dallas church. 



IV 



DARING TO BE A PASTOR 

IT was a midsummer day in 1882, and fear- 
fully hot, when C. I. Scofield reached a little 
Southwestern town on the bank of a muddy 
river. It was Dallas, Texas, now the largest 
city in the State, to which he had gone in obe- 
dience to what he believed to be God's call, 
given him in St. Louis by the Congregational 
Home Missions Superintendent. 

He reached Dallas on a Saturday; and Sun- 
day morning he went to the church building 
where he was to preach. The people had been 
notified that he was coming, and a Deacon Page 
was on hand to meet him at the door. It is 
not strange that you will see a photograph of 
Deacon, later Elder, Page framed and on the 
wall of Dr. Scofield's study to-day. 

Counting Deacon Page, there were at the time 
just twelve members of the First Congrega- 
tional Church of Dallas; the other eleven were 
women. Some of the husbands of the women 
came to some church services, but they were 

41 



42 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



not communicant members. It was not long 
before practically all of those who came were 
converted. 

The new pastor's first sermon, preached that 
Sunday morning, was from the text: "The 
righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree; he 
shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon" (Psalm 
92: 12). He had made a special study of endog- 
enous trees, as a boy, and he took occasion to 
tell something about the habits and facts of 
palm-tree life as illuminating the text. (Endog- 
enous plants, like the palm, are the "inside 
growers,'' so called: those that grow from within 
rather than by the addition of layers from with- 
out. The believer, with Christ within as his 
life, grows and flourishes like the palm-tree.) 

At the evening service, the same Sunday, he 
preached from John 3: 16: "For God so loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life." He had 
specially asked the Lord to save some one that 
night; and the answer to his prayer was two 
conversions. 

Mr. Scofield's Christian service in Y. M. C. A. 
and other meetings had given him some experi- 
ence in winning souls to Christ in public meet- 



Daring to be a Pastor 



43 



ings. It was his custom to ask, at the close of 
an evangelistic message, that any present who 
wished to signify their personal acceptance of 
Jesus as Saviour would either arise or hold up 
a hand. Then, at the close of the meeting, 
he would state that he would be glad to meet 
all such; he wanted to know them personally; 
he was sure he had not made everything clear; 
it was important that they should talk things 
over together — and the instant the meeting 
was closed he would be down among the people 
seeking out those who had given any public 
expression of their faith, would have them by 
the hand, and thus, as the other people passed 
out, he would be in the midst of what proved 
to be a little after-meeting with the new seekers 
or converts. This plan was one that God 
blessed, and it was used in the church at Dallas. 

The young preacher was ordained to the 
Gospel ministry in the Dallas church by a large 
and representative Council of Congregational 
ministers and churches. The Council, by a 
committee of its foremost members, took up, at 
the insistence of the candidate, the whole ques- 
tion of his past life. He had given but eigh- 
teen months to special study for his ordination. 
Yet those eighteen months of study were so 



44 



The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



tireless, thorough, and searching, based as they 
were upon his lifelong habits of study in liter- 
ature and the law, that very few ministers come 
up for ordination after studies so unsparing. 
During this intensive preparation he had studied 
with profound earnestness and care three stand- 
ard treatises on systematic theology; had read 
church history, pastoral theology, and homi- 
letics. Together with all this he had had the 
extraordinary opportunity of Bible study of an 
unusual sort under the personal teaching of Dr. 
James H. Brookes. When he was examined for 
his ordination, he asked not to be favored in 
the examination, — and he was not. But he was 
ordained with enthusiastic approval. 

Yet in spite of the encouraging beginning in 
the new church that first Sunday, things went 
very slowly. There was a bitter prejudice in the 
South against Congregational churches and min- 
isters. Most Southern people knew the Con- 
gregational denomination only as the church 
of Henry Ward Beecher, the great "Aboli- 
tionist," and therefore as a "Yankee church." 
Little by little the people of Dallas, however, 
came to learn that the new pastor of the Yan- 
kee church was a Confederate soldier. That 
gave him some social standing, but the people 



The First Congregational Church in Dallas, Texas, of which 
Dr. Scofield was pastor 



Daring to be a Pastor 



45 



who received him socially would not come near 
his church, even though they gladly entertained 
him in their own homes. "Why should he be 
a Yankee preacher instead of a Presbyterian?" 
they kept asking. 

Well, if the people wouldn't come to hear 
him, he would go after the people. He capi- 
talized his experience with the St. Louis rail- 
road men, and began persistent visiting in the 
homes of the folks in Dallas whom he wanted 
to win. One day, in his church service, he asked ' 
if any present would like to have a cottage 
prayer-meeting in their own home. A twelve- 
year-old boy raised his hand. 

"Well, what is it?" asked the pastor. 

"I think mammy' d like to have yu come," 
said the boy. 

"I'll be there," said the pastor. 

At the close of the service he spoke to the 
boy, and — then or later — he discovered that the 
boy's father kept one of the lowest barrooms in 
Dallas. Nothing daunted, Pastor Scofield went 
to the three-room house on the appointed night. 
The boy had hustled around and gathered 
neighbors together in force, probably largely 
from curiosity. The front room of the little 
house was packed with people when this un- 



46 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 

usual "cottage prayer-meeting" began. And the 
mother and sister of that saloon-keeper's home 
came to Christ that night. Later the father 
was saved. That mother is still living; she led 
probably seventy-five souls to Christ after her 
conversion. 

"Yankee" pastor Scofield made it his custom 
to hold two such cottage prayer-meetings every 
week. And people were converted all the time. 
Such conversions, made in the presence of their 
neighbors, were genuine. There was no mere 
"joining the church" formality, as so many 
people join the church to-day — like a social 
club. These people took Jesus Christ as their 
personal Saviour; they knew their neighbors 
would be watching them to see whether it was 
going to mean anything in changed lives; they 
trusted Christ to bring even that miracle to 
pass; and He was faithful to their trust, as 
always. 

Of course the new converts wanted to con- 
nect themselves with Mr. Scofield's church; 
and they did so. When a new Home Missions 
Superintendent came to Dallas after six weeks, 
there were nine to be received into the church, 
and he was delighted. But he cautioned the 
new pastor to be careful not to let his church 



Daring to be a Pastor 



47 



become too much of a hoi polloi affair, a " beg- 
gars* club." That would never do, he said. 
As a matter of fact, these humble people who 
were coming to Christ and joining the First 
Congregational Church were by no means 
beggars; they were honest working people. 
And Mr. Scofield, as he watched the Lord 
working and trusted the matter wholly to 
Him, could not help hoping, down in his heart, 
that the Lord himself, if on earth, would have 
loved to "join" that church. He would have 
felt at home there, for so many people there 
loved Him and had already welcomed Him,. 
So the pastor kept right on taking in as mem- 
bers all who wanted to come, on the basis 
of personal faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour. 
Their lives were being revolutionized; and 
some of them were becoming really prosperous 
in business and strong citizens. 

Two years of this sort of pastoral evangel- 
ism had brought the church from a member- 
ship of about fourteen to two hundred, and the 
building was being filled. A young woman of 
a Michigan family that had moved to Dallas 
was attending the church, a Miss Hetty Hall 
van Wart; and about six months after the 
pastor first met Miss van Wart she became Mrs. 



48 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



Scofield. This was in 1884; and as he and she 
look back to-day over the thirty-six years 
since those early beginnings in the Dallas 
church they praise God together for his good- 
ness in having brought them into each other's 
lives. 

The work of the First Congregational Church 
went on growing, under God, until a new brick 
building had to be erected, holding some twelve 
hundred people; and then two mission churches 
were planted by the mother church. A large 
lot adjoining the home church, on a corner, was 
secured, a big tent was pitched on this for hot 
summer days, and large evangelistic tent meet- 
ings were held, as the blessing of God continued 
unabated. 

Under the preaching of Dr. James H. Brookes, 
of St. Louis, a boy named W. Irving Carroll had 
been converted, and had united with Dr. 
Brookes' church. Not long after that, as he 
puts it to-day, he "became sadly backslidden 
and lived a very worldly life for a number of 
years." Then through the grace of God he was 
restored to the fellowship of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and about this time moved to Dallas. 
Here he came under the training and Bible 
teaching of Dr. Scofield, went the whole way 



Daring to be a Pastor 



49 



with the Lord, and entered the Christian min- 
istry. Then he was made pastor of one of the 
branches of the home church, the Grand Avenue 
Congregational Church of Dallas. When Pastor 
Scofield finally left Dallas, Mr. Carroll was made 
pastor of the home church itself. And now he 
is serving as pastor of the famous Washington 
and Compton Avenues Presbyterian Church of 
St. Louis, of which Dr. James H. Brookes for 
years was pastor, and later Dr. Harris H. Gregg. 

An illuminating comment on the ministry of 
the new pastor at Dallas was made in a letter 
written in 1916 by Mr. W. A. Nason, of Dallas, a 
member of the church at that time, to Dr. James 
M. Gray, of the Moody Bible Institute. Mr. 
Nason wrote: 

"When Dr. Scofield came to the church, it 
was a congregation of confessors and professors; 
unconverted persons were teaching in the Sun- 
day-school; persons not Christians were em- 
ployed to sing in the choir. Money was raised 
in various ways, even to running a dining-hall 
at the State fair, as other churches of the city 
were doing. After a while all of this was 
changed, without direct reference to the incon- 
sistency of the course pursued. In the matter 
of getting money, some talks were given on the 



50 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



method of raising money among God's children, 
taking nothing of the Gentiles. Soon it dawned 
upon us that as God's children we ought to 
raise the necessary money from Christians to 
carry on God's work. It was not long before we 
became self-supporting, and no longer looked to 
the Home Missionary Society for aid. 

"Our members increasing to such an extent 
that we had to build a new church building, the 
first act of the finance committee was to pass a 
resolution to the effect that, as this was to be 
God's house, we would solicit no funds from an 
unbeliever, but build with money furnished by 
God's children. We bought the land and erected 
the building on this basis, and, so far as I know, 
no money came from an unconverted person. 

"The music question was simply settled, not 
by telling us that it was not right to have un- 
converted persons singing praises for us to the 
glory of God, whom they rejected, but by arous- 
ing within our hearts the desire to worship God 
in a way pleasing to Him. 

"Our pastor never assumed to be any man's 
conscience, and, if asked regarding any course 
of conduct, he would refer to some passage of 
Scripture and tell the person inquiring to pray 
for guidance." 



Daring to be a Pastor 51 

The membership of the Dallas church, when 
finally Pastor Scofield felt led to leave it in 
order to accept the call to become pastor of 
Moody's church at Northfield, had risen from 
its original fourteen members to 551, and 814 
members in all had been received. A signifi- 
cant statement occurs in the letter of dismis- 
sion given to their pastor by the Dallas church: 
"We commend him to you as one who delights to 
hide behind the uplifted cross of Jesus; one who 
will preach a full and free salvation through the 
shed blood of God's Lamb; one who will lead 
you into the deep things of the Word, and one 
who teaches and who preaches the whole truth 
of God." 

Back in St. Louis, immediately after his con- 
version, Mr. Scofield had first heard and met 
D. L. Moody. Mr. Moody was at that time 
holding one of his great evangelistic campaigns 
in St. Louis; it lasted for five months, and 
Mr. Scofield had gladly entered into it and had 
become an active worker in its soul-winning 
opportunities. The acquaintance thus begun 
with the great evangelist continued until the 
latter's death. After becoming pastor of the 
church in Dallas, Mr. Scofield coveted for his 



52 The Life Story of C. 7. Scofield 



people the blessing of Mr. Moody's testimony 
and preaching, and twice, at his invitation, 
Mr. Moody held series of special meetings in 
Dallas. The latter' s characteristic discernment 
showed him that Dr. Scofield was a man whom 
the North and East needed, and, while he was 
yet an unknown man in the Christian ministry, 
Mr. Moody invited him to the great Northfield 
Conference as a speaker. That was his first 
introduction to the wider fields of acquaintance 
and service in the Lord's vineyard. 

"Moody," says Dr. Scofield to-day, "was one 
of the greatest men of his generation. I have 
sometimes thought that Dwight L. Moody and 
General Grant were, in any true definition of 
greatness, the greatest men I have ever met. 
Moody had the strength of his Yankee birth 
and ancestry; he was a man also of great kind- 
ness of heart, with a zeal for souls, and absolutely 
loyal to the Word of God." 

Among the mighty formative influences of 
Pastor Scofield's life during these years was the 
far-famed Niagara Bible Conference, held an- 
nually at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Under 
Drs. W. J. Erdman, James H. Brookes, Na- 
thaniel West, H. M. Parsons, and others the 
Bible was taught with the highest scholarly and 




Dwight L. Moody 
Foremost Evangelist of his day — Founder of three great schools 



Daring to be a Pastor 



53 



spiritual power. Dr. Scofield was welcomed into 
this fellowship and became a favorite teacher. 

Invitations to do Bible teaching and preaching 
at conferences and conventions were coming in- 
creasingly to Mr. Scofield while he was at Dallas; 
and finally, in 1895, it became clear to him that 
God wanted him to accept the urgent call from 
Mr. Moody to become pastor of the Congrega- 
tional Church at East Northfield, Massachusetts, 
Mr. Moody's own church, and the church home 
of the students at the great Northfield and 
Mount Hermon Schools, as well as of the farmers' 
families permanently living there. When he 
accepted this pastorate he was also made presi- 
dent of the Northfield Bible Training School. 
The work gave him an opportunity of preaching 
to a thousand students every Sunday in addi- 
tion to his other pastoral opportunities. 

For seven years Dr. Scofield ministered at 
Northfield, during which time Mr. Moody's 
death occurred. Mr. Carroll, in Dallas, now 
felt led to give up the pastorate of the First 
Church there in order to become pastor of the 
First Presbyterian Church of Texarkana, Texas ; 
and Dr. Scofield was urged to return to his old 
charge. He consented to do this, returning to 
Dallas in 1902. 



54 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



It is interesting to read the following in the 
action of the ecclesiastical council at Northfield, 
accepting his resignation: 

"The council discern issues of unusual weight 
in this case. This church gathers and disperses 
religious forces felt throughout the Union. Each 
year from all over the country Christian strangers 
and many from other lands make it a shrine: 
in part from hallowed associations and more for 
the pursuit of the higher religious life. The pas- 
tor here is, in a measure, a host to Christian pil- 
grims from half the world. Hence a change of 
the pastorate touches wide circles in the Gospel 
kingdom. The pastorate now closing has in its 
seven years gathered into the church 196 by 
confession and 112 by letter, a total of 308; and 
has spent large activities in the yearly convoca- 
tions held here. It has been marked by strong, 
skilful, and productive preaching to the dwellers 
here, to the members of the favored schools 
here, and to the strangers visiting the town. 
These have found memorable profit from this 
pure, fervid, and enriching ministry. 

"And while the council can but sympathize 
with the church for the frequent absences of the 
pastor to meet the calls which his eminent 
evangelistic power created, they also rejoice in 



Daring to be a Pastor 



55 



the blessed gifts which have so profited other 
churches. We trust the Head of the Church 
will recompense this Zion by future pastoral 
faithfulness for the sacrifices thus made for 
other peoples. 

"It is the happiness of the council to record 
their enjoyment of the personal relations be- 
tween themselves and Rev. Dr. Scofield. His 
urbanity, fraternal fulness of heart, and enkin- 
dling spiritual fervors have made him a brother 
beloved by us; and while deploring our loss of 
these gifts, they give emphasis to our commen- 
dation of him to the churches and ministers of 
Christ to whom he goes." 



V 



REALLY STUDYING THE BIBLE 

IMMEDIATELY after his conversion, in Sep- 
tember of 1879, Mr. Scofield had, as has al- 
ready been pointed out, begun to study the Bible 
— or he had begun to try to do so. He had speed- 
ily realized that he knew almost nothing of the 
Bible. The saving feature of his ignorance of 
the Word was that he knew that he was ignorant. 
He inevitably compared his own ignorance and 
that of most people concerning the Bible with 
his own thoroughgoing mastery of other things 
that he had taken up. Naturally a man of that 
sort could not be content to be a real Chris- 
tian and have his Bible knowledge of a tenth- 
rate or even second-rate sort. He must master 
this as he had been mastering literature, his- 
tory, and law. 

He made various attempts to study the Bible 
in spots. But he soon discovered that he could 
not understand the New Testament until he had 
studied the Old. Indeed, looking back to-day 
over his lifetime experience in Bible study, he 

56 



Really Studying the Bible 57 



says emphatically that there are not two best 
ways of studying anything, and there is only 
one best way to study the Bible: the way it is 
recorded. The way in which the Holy Spirit de- 
cided to record the facts that are brought to- 
gether in the Bible was, first, by assembling in 
historical order the books of the Old Testament. 

The first verse of the New Testament gave the 
young convert the clue to proper Bible study. 
He read there: "The book of the generation of 
Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abra- 
ham." Now, his old-time habit of investigation, 
dating back to boyhood days, asserted itself. 
The son of David — who was he? The son of 
Abraham — who was he? For that is evidently 
where the Bible, or the Holy Spirit, begins in 
recording the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Oh, yes, Dr. Scofield knew "something" 
about Abraham, and he knew "something" 
about David, as will any one who has been 
brought up in a Christian family. "That is a 
part of the ' general knowledge of mankind/ as 
we lawyers say," said Dr. Scofield in telling of 
those early Bible-study experiences. This "gen- 
eral knowledge," that is, is such that in the 
courts you do not have to prove it. But, while 
the names of David and Abraham were not 



58 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



meaningless to him, he did not know much about 
them, and he knew that he did not. 

When as a boy, stretched out on the floor 
before the open fire, he became so absorbingly 
interested in Shakespeare, and biography, and 
history that, whenever he came across an un- 
known name, he was driven to read every other 
book he could lay his hands on to find out more 
about that unknown name, and then went on to 
make a boyish but none the less earnest and se- 
rious map of universal history, he did not realize 
that God was preparing him for work in Bible 
study that was to put the whole Christian world 
under heavy debt to him as an ambassador of 
Christ. 

This first verse of the first book of the New 
Testament drove Scofield back to an exhaus- 
tive study of David and Abraham. But as he 
began to dig into what the Bible had to tell 
about those two characters, he found that, in 
Bible study, as in everything else, he could not 
isolate anything; there was nothing to do but 
to go back and study the whole of the Old 
Testament. (What the more confirmed him in 
this was the example of Christ, as given in Luke 
24:27, 44.) 

And he did. He did not give up studying the 



Really Studying the Bible 



59 



New Testament in the meantime, — his soul- 
winning work compelled its use; but he did not 
patch up merely bits here and there and call it 
Bible study, as so many of us do. He went 
laboriously, thoroughly, painstakingly, tediously 
on with his work of finding out what God really 
had to say in His Word. " My method of work, 
you see," says Dr. Scofield in an apologetic way, 
"is not what would be called rapid; it cannot 
be made rapid." Come to think of it, just what 
workers in this world who have put their gener- 
ations under heavy debt for their life-work, 
whether in the field of science, or invention, or 
literature, or art, have been rapid workers ! The 
very idea of rapidity seems to exclude perma- 
nent, time-defying results. God is not in a 
hurry; why should we be? 

Not only the first verse of the first chapter 
of the Gospel of Matthew turned Scofield back 
to the Old Testament; but such words, spoken 
of John the Baptist, as "This is he that was 
spoken of by the prophet Esaias" (Matthew 
3 : 3) also sent him back to the Old Testament 
for further information. So he must bone down 
to a personal study of the original sources, and 
take, not men's opinions, but God's Word. 

Not only did his ingrained habits of study 



60 The Life Story of C. L Scofield 



force him to treat the Bible in this way, but he 
felt also that it was only reverent to study the 
Bible thoroughly. He felt that God's Word de- 
served it. He felt that there was no excuse for 
not studying the Bible in the most thorough way 
possible. It is not a big book; he had given far 
more time already to the study of other books 
infinitely less worth while, valuable though they 
had been. Does it not seem strange that these 
self-evident facts, known in theory to all of us, 
have not driven more of us to the sort of Bible 
study which the young converted lawyer felt 
he must have? 

While the beginnings of this new and life- 
changing study began immediately after his 
conversion, while he was in St. Louis and still 
practising law, and while his trusted friend and 
Bible teacher, Dr. Brookes, guided him and ad- 
vised his use of certain helpful books, it was 
not until he gave himself up wholly to Chris- 
tian work through accepting the pastorate of 
the church in Dallas that he really got well into 
his lifetime Bible study. There he began to 
give his people the results as he dug things out 
for himself. He preached these results in the 
pulpit; and he held a regular week-day evening 
Bible class in his church. 



From Dr. Scofield*s Personal Bible. 



It is interesting to run through the fly-leaves of a personal copy of the Bible that Dr. Sco- 
field has used much, and to read some of his notes, and outlines of addresses, and bits of Bible 
study, and choice quotations. The following are selections from these fly-leaf markings. 



1. Repentance 4. Regeneration 

2. Faith 5, x Adoption 

3. Justification 6. Sanctification 

7. Glory 

Waiting on the Lord 

1. Psalm 62 : 1 "silent" 

2. Psalm 104 : 27 "depe'nd upon — wait ex- 
pectantly" 

3. 2 Chron. 7 : 18, 19 f To wait as a servant 
Prov. 8 : 34 1 or soldier 

To wait upon God is to be silent that he 
may speak; expecting all things from him; 
and girt for instant unquestioning obedience 
to tbe slightest movement of his will. 
IUust, 2. Sam. 23 : 13-17 

1. They were separated unto David 

2. They were near 

3. They were silent 

4. David's sigh was their command 



"All* 

Leave all Luke 5 : 11 
Believe all Luke 24 : 25 
Obey all Matt. 28 : 20; Acts 5 : 29, 

Receive all 1 Cor. 3 : 22, John 20 ; 22, 
Matt. 28 : 18 



Go to all 



Matt. 28 : 19 



Burning Quest, our day 

Insp. and Auth. the O. T. 
For 30 years Higher Criticism 

— Pentateuch — composite — not Mosaic 

— Deut. especially late forgery 

— Historical Books full errors 

— No Psalm by David 

— No predictive element in Proph. 

— Daniel a forgery 

The words '''one" and "once" in the follow- 
ing verses are underlined and connected 
Hebrews 10 . 2, 10, 12, and 14. 



"One may have an intelligent opinion 
about divine things, and be a worthy man; 
but the taste of divine things, the realizing 
sense of what they are, belongs only to 
those in whom the Spirit lives ungrieved." 
—Jonathan Edwards. 

There are some who desire to know with 
the sole purpose that they may know, and 
it is base curiosity; and some who desire 
to know that they may be known, and it 
is base ambition; and some who desire to 
'know that they may sell their knowledge 
for ( wealth and honor, and it is base avarice; 
but there are some, also, who desire to 
know that they may be edified, and il is 
prudence; and some who desire to know 
that they may help others, and it is char- 
ity.— Bernard. 

Rom. 4. The Blessed Man 



" I paused last eve beside the blacksmith's 
door, 

And heard the anvil rinff; the vespers 
chime, 

And looking in.. F saw upon the floor 
Old hammers worn with beating years of 
time. 

" 'How many anvils have you had,' said I, 
'To wear and batter all these hammers 
so?' 

'Just one,' he answered. Then, with twin 
kling eye, 

'The anvil wears, the hammers out, you 
know.' 

" And so I thought, the anvil of God's Word 
For ages skeptics' blows have beat upon, 
But though the noise of falling blows was 
heard, 

The anvil is unchanged, the hammer 
gone." 



Really Studying the Bible 61 



This week-day evening Bible class was not the 
mid-week prayer-meeting. That he believed 
should be kept for prayer and testimony; and 
under his pastorate and guidance his people soon 
had great liberty in this. In giving their testi- 
monies as to how God had blessed them Pastor 
Scofield would insist upon their giving a Scrip- 
ture with every testimony, and they had great 
blessings from this use of the Scripture. 

The Bible-study evenings were open to all 
who cared to come, and soon people were attend- 
ing from other churches, and ministers also were 
coming. Before long a Bible-study class in the 
Y. M. C. A. was added to [the weekly work, and 
the ministry was extended. 

One of the results of the Bible-class work in 
the Dallas church was the little book, for many 
years now of world-wide circulation, "Rightly 
Dividing the Word of Truth." Experience with 
many students had shown the pastor and Bible 
teacher that a knowledge of certain truths was 
essential to any real comprehension of the Bible 
message. These "beginning truths," as they 
have been called, were put together by him dur- 
ing his vacation in 1888. The work of making 
the little book was a time-consuming and labori- 
ous task for him then, and " spoiled " his vacation 



62 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



entirely one summer at Niagara. But what a 
blessing it has been to multitudes of others! 

Brethren in the Dallas church furnished 
money for composition and plates for a first 
edition of the book, and shortly after this the 
well-known New York publishers of sound 
Bible literature, Loizeaux Brothers, purchased 
the plates and publishing rights, and have con- 
tinued the publication of the book until this 
day. They have brought out some thirty-seven 
different editions, and other editions have been 
issued by other publishers. Doubtless hundreds 
of thousands of copies of the book have thus 
gone into circulation, and its mission of blessing 
still continues. 

Among the more important of the by-prod- 
ucts of the Dallas work must be mentioned 
the formation and training of a class of young 
men obviously having pastoral and evangelistic 
gifts. While many participated in the instruc- 
tion in part, ten such students continued through 
the course and, having made full proof of their 
spiritual gifts in many searching experiences, re- 
ceived ordination. It is gratifying to record that 
the seal of the Divine blessing has been wonder- 
ful upon the varied ministry of these men. 

For fifteen years Mr. Scofield went patiently, 



Really Studying the Bible 63 



studiously, comprehensively on in his thorough- 
going Bible study, mastering what he set out to 
do, as he hunted down through the pages of 
the Word of God the precious facts and truths 
that he was after, and that the Holy Spirit 
opened up and illuminated to him. Using the 
results of his work as he did for his constant 
teaching and preaching, he was keeping them 
also carefully written out in full notes, preserv- 
ing them systematically. These studies were 
later, and little by little, embodied in what 
finally became the Scofield Bible Correspondence 
Course. This Course had begun by the issuing 
of pamphlets, covering portions of the Word, 
until the time came when it was possible to 
bring such pamphlets together in the three 
Bible Correspondence Course volumes which 
have been used by such great numbers, and 
which are to-day a permanent and rich contri- 
bution to the Bible study of the English-speak- 
ing Christian world, as ministered by the Moody 
Bible Institute. 

It was when Dr. Scofield accepted Mr. 
Moody's invitation to become pastor of the 
Congregational church at Northfield (1895- 
1902) that the Correspondence Course was com- 
pleted. Even then it was gone over again, and 



64 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



revised, references were verified, and the whole 
was made more thorough and complete. 

Into it had gone fifteen years of unremitting 
study of the Bible. And by "study" is not 
meant the reading of a number of books of an 
expository and exegetical nature, together with 
critical works. That also was done; but the 
foundation of it all was study of the Word itself. 
Oh, those days and nights of toil! And ever 
the rubbish heap grew — a stack for the sake of 
tracing out a single line sometimes — nay, some- 
times a single word. People to whom the Sco- 
field Correspondence Course or the Reference 
Bible notes may seem very simple and easy do 
not realize that a vast amount of investigation 
and research went into deciding what not to put 
into annotations. The attainment of truth, the 
interrelation of truth, the finding — few can know 
at what cost of toil — the simplest, clearest word 
for the expression of truth: all this was part of 
the costliness of the study. And all this as a 
preparation, though the toiler knew it not, for 
the making, years later, of the Reference Bible. 

About ten thousand different students, from 
practically every country on earth and the 
islands of the sea, studied the Correspondence 
Course while Dr. Scofield was personally in 



Really Studying the Bible 65 



charge of it. This great number represented 
almost every walk in life. Many ministers wrote 
to Dr. Scofield that the Correspondence Course 
had transformed their ministry. One such min- 
ister said that he had studied Hebrew and Greek 
in his seminary in order to be able to study the 
Bible in the original. But, like so many others, 
having thus learned the Hebrew and the Greek, 
his Bible study stopped right there — rather, it 
never began. For he never studied the Bible 
until he came into touch with the Scofield Cor- 
respondence Course: and then for the first time 
he learned by experience what real study of 
God's Word was. 

Dr. Scofield kept up the personal direction 
of the Correspondence School work from 1890 
to 191 5. It having then become necessary for 
him to commit this laborious work to other 
hands, the Correspondence Department of the 
Moody Bible Institute made arrangements with 
him to take it over; and any lover of the Bible, or 
one who wants to become an intelligent lover and 
student of the Bible, can now have access to the 
results of those years of painstaking study by tak- 
ing the course through the Moody Bible Institute.* 



* Information concerning this Course may be had by addressing the 
Moody Bible Institute, 153 Institute Place, Chicago. 



VI 

VICTORY AND MISSIONS 
LTHOUGH God had greatly blessed the 



ii Dallas pastor in his own life, and was 
blessing his studies in the Word to himself and 
to others, he had not yet entered into the New 
Testament teaching of the life of power and 
victory. There were times when he was anxious ; 
he knew this was unnecessary and wrong, and 
he longed to step out fully into the normal 
New Testament Christian experience. It was 
in harmony with his method of patient thor- 
oughness in all his studies that he finally ap- 
prehended the truth as related to the new life 
in Christ Jesus. 

The Southwest, in the years of Scofield's first 
ministry in Dallas, seethed with so-called holi- 
ness testimony. Probably no phase of the vari- 
ous teachings on the holy life was unrepresented. 
To all of it in those beginning-days of his Chris- 
tian life and service he lent an eager ear — eager 
because of an intense desire to realize in his own 
experience the highest Christian life. But of 




66 



Victory and Missions 67 

necessity he must bring those methods, to the 
results of which he was hearing rapturous testi- 
monies, to the test of Scripture. Again and 
again he was compelled to turn from the theories 
which he was hearing. Not so spoke the Word. 

The light broke in through a study of the 
threefold experience of the Apostle Paul. Be- 
ginning as a self-satisfied, self-righteous legalist, 
Paul met Jesus on the Damascus road and be- 
came a justified man; but still a man under the 
defeats recorded in the seventh of Romans. 
Passing then into the marvellous victories of the 
eighth of Romans, it was plain that Paul ascribed 
these victories (Romans 8:2) to the new life in 
Christ Jesus as energized and made effectual 
through the indwelling Holy Spirit. The eager 
seeker found that great triumph chapter athrill 
with the Spirit. Passing over the parenthetic 
ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters to the twelfth 
— the true continuation of the eighth — he found 
the disclosure of the step into victory — and not 
victory over the Adamic self merely, but into 
the whole life of fruitful service and fulness of 
joy. The new act of faith demanded the pres- 
entation (or yielding) of the body, demanded 
not only the cessation of conscious resistance 
to Christ, but also the acceptance of the Christ 



68 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



life plan as one of sacrifice. A life no longer to 
serve self, but Christ. The thing demanded 
was an act as definite as the act of faith in which 
the new life began. 

When this was perceived, the answer in Sco- 
field's soul was obedience. From that moment 
a new experience of fruitful service and of inner 
blessing began. 

And now, when he had entered into the whole 
blessing, he found to his delight that he had 
long before been getting blessed glimpses of this 
New Testament truth through his study of the 
Old Testament types. He saw that the Jehovah 
Jesus foretold and foreshadowed throughout the 
entire Law and the Prophets had provided for 
him not only salvation from the penalty of sin, 
but also salvation from its power and all-suffi- 
ciency for peace and joy and the ninefold fruit 
of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22, 23). 

At the Niagara Bible Conference Pastor Sco- 
field met, for several successive years, Hudson 
Taylor, the founder and director of the China 
Inland Mission. Through Mr. Taylor he began 
to have an interest in foreign missions. This 
set him to studying the Bible to get God's direct 
word on that subject. He saw that the China 
Inland Mission was wonderfully apostolic in its 



Victory and Missions 



69 



spirit, plan, and purposes, and he had the rare 
privilege of many talks with Mr. Taylor. 

About this time he came across a book by the 
brilliant journalist - traveler, William Eleroy 
Curtis, who had been sent by the United States 
Government, before the opening of the World's 
Fair in Chicago in 1893, to South and Central 
America in order to stir up an interest there 
in the coming exposition. Scofield read with 
deepest interest what Mr. Curtis had to say 
about the great lands to our south. He had 
an opportunity of hearing Mr. Curtis speak, and 
he was impressed when the speaker told of the 
religious destitution of Central America, con- 
taining nearly three million souls, yet with only 
dissolute priests making a mockery of minister- 
ing to them spiritually. The only Protestant 
missionary in Central America apparently was 
at Guatemala, while the Moravian brethren had 
a mission on the coast. 

Now Scofield made a careful study of the 
Bible plan of evangelizing the world — which he 
still believes to be the only true plan. He found 
there that the early Christians, acting under the 
direct instruction of our Lord Jesus Himself, 
began their evangelizing in Jerusalem, went on 
into all Judea, then to Samaria, and then on 



70 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



progressively "unto the uttermost part of the 
earth" (Acts i : 8). Evidently it was God's pur- 
pose that Christians should evangelize as they 
go, not overleaping great sections of the earth 
in telling mankind the good news of Jesus. 

So, "beginning at Dallas/' the question arose: 
What is the nearest unevangelized section to 
me? The answer seemed to be Mexico. But 
upon investigation Scofield found that there 
were seven strong denominations working in 
Mexico. That could not be said to be wholly 
neglected. Pushing on still farther, what was 
the next possible section? Central America. 
He believed that the Lord had called his atten- 
tion to Central America through the writing and 
speaking of Curtis. But before entering upon 
any missionary enterprise there, Scofield wrote 
to different denominational mission boards and 
asked whether they would be willing to under- 
take the evangelizing of Central America. 
Without exception these boards answered that 
they were already staggering under heavy bur- 
dens in their missionary work and obligations, 
and could not conscientiously enter a new field. 
It was only then that he felt clear that God 
was calling him to this unoccupied region. 

The mission-aroused pastor now called to- 



Victory and Missions 



71 



gether for special prayer three of the consecrated 
men of his church, men who knew how to pray, 
and who had given their lives utterly to the 
Lord — E. M. Powell, Luther Rees, and W. A. 
Nason. The little group of pastor and laymen 
earnestly asked the Lord to use them to evan- 
gelize Central America. 

After they had prayed about thematter, the sub- 
ject was brought before the entire church, and there 
it was taken up with prayers and literally with 
tears. Missionary volunteers began to offer for 
the field. And from that time the Dallas church 
began to spend more money on missions than on 
home expenses, and has kept this up ever since. 

That was the beginning of the now well- 
established and greatly blessed Central Ameri- 
can Mission. It was formed at the home of the 
pastor, in Dallas, on November 14, 1890. Dr. 
Scofield was made secretary, Mr. Powell the 
treasurer, and Mr. Rees the chairman, of the 
Council. In 1893 the Hon. D. H. Scott, of 
Paris, Texas, was added to the Council, and in 
1894 he became Treasurer of the Mission, con- 
tinuing in that office ever since. From the start 
it has been a faith mission, depending upon God 
and not upon men or organizations. The ser- 
vices of the Council are wholly gratuitous — no 



72 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



rent — the only items of expense being postage 
and printing, and these largely met by the sub- 
scriptions to the Bulletin, which is now issued 
bi-monthly. 

The statement of belief of the Central Ameri- 
can Mission is interesting and significant: "We 
believe in one God, revealed as existing in three 
equal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; in 
the death of Jesus Christ for our sins as a true 
substitute; in salvation by faith alone without 
works; in good works as the fruit of salvation; 
in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
ments as verbally inspired in the original writ- 
ings; and in a future state of unending blessed- 
ness for the saved and unending conscious suffer- 
ing for the lost/' 

As to other details, the Mission is conducted 
on the following basis: "The Mission is inter- 
denominational. It does not seek to reproduce 
on mission grounds the divisions of Protestan- 
tism: Evangelical — it holds to the faith once for 
all delivered to the. saints. Evangelistic — it be- 
lieves that the evangelization of the world, not its 
civilization, is the true work of the church. Two 
other principles are fundamental: The Mission 
does not personally solicit either missionaries or 
money, and no salaries are paid to any one." 



Victory and Missions 



73 



During the thirty years since its beginning, 
the needs of the Mission and its missionaries 
have always been met. Never once has there 
been a failure. There are now ninety-two 
churches in the field of Central America, with 
about five thousand five hundred members, as 
the result of this work. From the Dallas church 
alone some nine missionaries have gone to Central 
America, and a number from the same church 
to other foreign fields. 

The bi-monthly Bulletin of the Central Amer- 
ican Mission is interesting reading to-day. (It 
is published at Paris, Texas, at the very nominal 
subscription price of twenty-five cents a year; 
those who would have fellowship in the work 
of this Mission will do well to secure its regular 
visits in their homes.) 

Perhaps readers of this Life Story would like 
to put in their prayer-lists the names of the 
missionaries of this Mission that was born in 
faith and prayer, and ask God to go on in ever- 
increasing blessing through them to the needy 
field so near home. The missionaries are as 
follows : 

A. E. Bishop, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 
Mrs. A. E. Bishop, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 
Mrs. Caspar Wistar, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 



74 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



Miss A. F. Houser, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 
Miss B. E. Zimmerman, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guate- 
mala. 

Dr. H. A. Becker, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 
Mrs. H. A. Becker, Box 74, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 
A. B. Treichler, Solola, Guatemala. 
Mrs. A. B. Treichler, Solola, Guatemala. 
F. G. Toms, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. 
Mrs. F. G. Toms, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. 

H. W. Toms, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. 
Mrs. H. W. Toms, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. 
Mrs. Rosemma V. B. Hunter, Escuintla, Guatemala. 
J. T. Butler, Zacapa, Guatemala. 

Mrs. J. T. Butler, Zacapa, Guatemala. 
W. C. Townsend, Antigua, Guatemala. 
Mrs. W. C. Townsend, Antigua, Guatemala. 
Mrs. F. W. Boyle, Box 289, San Jose, Costa Rica. 
Miss A. G. McLean, Box 289, San Jose, Costa Rica. 
W. H. Hooper, Box 36, Managua, Nicaragua. 
Mrs. W. H. Hooper, Box 36, Managua, Nicaragua. 
Miss Annie E. Thomas, Box 36, Managua, Nicaragua. 
Karl D. Hummel, Box 36, Managua, Nicaragua. 
Mrs. Karl D. Hummel, Box 36, Managua, Nicaragua. 
L. W. McConnell, Box 149, San Salvador, Salvador. 
Mrs. L. W. McConnell, Box 149, San Salvador, Salvador. 
Mrs. Gertrude Bell, Box 149, San Salvador, Salvador. 

I. S. Smith, Cojutepeque, Salvador. 
Mrs. I. S. Smith, Cojutepeque, Salvador. 

Miss Laura Nelson, Dulce Nombre de Copan, Honduras. . 
W. F. Aberle, Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras. 
Mrs. W. F. Aberle, Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras. 
Miss Beatrice Newman, Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras. 
C. F. Lincoln, Comayaguela, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. 
Mrs. C. F. Lincoln, Comayaguela, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. 
Miss Marion Steinbach, Comayaguela, Tegucigalpa, Hon- 
duras. 

Herbert R. Peaslee, Choluteca, Honduras. 

Miss A. J. Gohrman, Colinas, Santa Barbara, Honduras. 



VII 



THE REFERENCE BIBLE BEGUN 

A BOUT the year 1902 Dr. Scofield was one 
day talking to a very dear friend in New 
York City — a layman and business man, Mr. 
Alwyn Ball, whose sympathetic friendship and 
co-operation had meant much to him in his 
work. "Dr. Scofield," said Mr. Ball, "just 
what work are you now looking ahead to or 
planning, beyond the Bible conference teaching 
work that you constantly do, and in addition 
to your Bible Correspondence Course? What 
Bible work have you in mind that will remain 
permanently after you are gone?" 

Challenged by this question, Dr. Scofield told 
his friend something of what had been running 
through his mind as to the need of a Reference 
Bible that should be helpful to those who wanted 
to do systematic Bible study for themselves, yet 
without being too formidable in size and anno- 
tations. Mr. Ball at once said that he believed 
the Lord wanted Dr. Scofield to bring out such 

a work. And with that conversation there came 

75 



76 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



the conviction from God, clearly revealed to 
the pastor and Bible student, that the Lord in- 
deed wanted him to undertake this. From that 
time on he never doubted God's call to the vast 
undertaking. Soon afterward the late John 
C. Pirie, of Chicago and New York, entered 
heartily into fellowship with Dr. Scofield in the 
very considerable expense involved in the work. 

Through his ministry in teaching Bible classes 
of ordinary men and women, his Bible Corre- 
spondence Course work reaching great numbers 
of such people, and his simple but searching and 
fundamental studies in the little book, " Rightly 
Dividing the Word of Truth," Dr. Scofield had 
had abundant evidence that multitudes of per- 
sons everywhere were needing and hungering 
for just such guidance in their Bible study as 
he had been providentially led to discover for 
himself and to give to others. But the time had 
come when he saw that if his Bible studies were 
to be of the widest usefulness they would need 
to be attached to the Word itself — and in a 
form not too bulky. Out of his own past expe- 
rience he asked himself the question: "What 
kind of reference Bible would have helped me 
most when I was first trying to learn something 
of the Word, but ignorant of the very first prin- 



The Reference Bible Begun 77 



ciples of Bible study?" Looking back then over 
twenty years of such study, and visualizing again 
his own need as an uninstructed beginner when 
he had first come to Christ, he began to see the 
sort of reference Bible that would have been 
most useful to him, and that he believed was 
still greatly needed. 

After serving seven years as pastor of the 
church in East Northfield at Mr. Moody's call, 
Dr. Scofield, as will be remembered, had re- 
turned to his old charge in Dallas, Texas, in 
1902. The people of the Dallas church now 
assured him that they would be content to have 
him give his time freely to work on the proposed 
Reference Bible if he would continue to serve 
them as their pastor. This was the joint work 
that he undertook to do; but after a year of it, 
in 1903, he found that he would either have to 
give his entire time to work on the Reference 
Bible or give it up — and he dared not do that. 
So the church, in unselfish devotion to the larg- 
est service of their Lord and Master, set him 
free to give uninterrupted attention to the Bible 
work, though his name was continued as their 
pastor until 1907, when he became pastor 
emeritus. 

And now seven years (from 1902 until the 



78 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



work was published in 1909) were given to a 
complete re-study of the Bible, a task that would 
have been impossible within that time had not 
the ground been so thoroughly covered in pre- 
paring the Correspondence Course. 

Dr. Scofield saw clearly that what was needed 
was not a commentary on the Bible, but the 
Bible itself with just enough help in reference 
form to keep the reader and student close to the 
Word of God. As he studied and pondered this, 
very early in his new work the entire plan of 
what is now the Scofield Reference Bible came 
to him. Few details were changed or added 
afterward. 

He saw, for example, the immense value of a 
system of chain references which should cover, 
one by one, all the great subjects or teachings 
of the Bible, commencing with the first clear 
mention of such a subject or theme in the Bible, 
and then continuing from passage to passage 
of every outstanding mention until the last such 
mention in the Bible was reached. At the 
place of final mention the series of references 
would be concluded by a clear, compact note 
summarizing the entire teaching of the Bible on 
that theme. The value of this simple help to 
Bible study, for one who wishes to find out for 



The Reference Bible Begun 79 



himself what God says on any of these subjects, 
is immense. It needs only to be stated to have 
its rare helpfulness clearly seen. 

Each book of the Bible must have a simple, 
clear introduction, and must also be accom- 
panied by a brief analysis of the book. 

Then there must be an introduction to each 
group of books, such as the Pentateuch, the 
Historical Books, the Poetical Books, the Pro- 
phetical Books, and the rest. 

He felt that a system of paragraphing, not 
following exactly any paragraphed Bible — 
though there were many of these — but break- 
ing up the material into paragraphs at such 
points as the narrative or message seemed best 
to warrant, and each paragraph to be headed 
by a clear sub-title which would give the reader 
an instant suggestion of the contents of that 
paragraph, would help to guide the student's 
thought in the right channel. This feature of 
the Reference Bible has been warmly approved, 
especially by ministers, who have found ser- 
monic help in these sub-heads. Dr. Scofield 
has owned his indebtedness to Dr. R. A. Torrey 
for the suggestion of this feature. 

Just here one of the secrets of the world-wide 



80 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



usefulness of the Scofield Reference Bible should 
be disclosed. How is it that ministers and Bible 
teachers, of advanced scholarship and mature 
learning in Bible fields, as well as the ordinary 
untaught lay reader of the Bible, alike find this 
work of untold value ? How is it that seminary 
professors and leading Bible students and min- 
isters of directly opposed views in Bible inter- 
pretation and in theological positions alike find 
this Bible of greatest use to them? 

For example, a very prominent Arminian 
theologian and a very prominent Calvinist theo- 
logian almost at the same time told Dr. Sco- 
field that they had been examining with much 
interest his definitions of crucial doctrinal words, 
such as Election, Predestination, and Foreordi- 
nation. And both of these men said to him, in 
effect, that they found that they could accept 
his definitions. One or the other said, to be 
sure, that he might guard this point or that a 
little in his own statement of the doctrine; he 
might phrase this or that point a little differ- 
ently; but that, on the whole, he found the defi- 
nitions in the Scofield Reference Bible sound and 
satisfactory. 

How can this be explained? The answer is 
simple. The man who gave his lifetime study to 



The Reference Bible Begun 81 



the making of the notes and comments in the 
Scofield Reference Bible was concerned only to 
find and state exactly what the Bible itself had 
to say on any and every point. And not every 
one recognizes that the Bible is a book on which 
all true believers can stand, if we are satisfied to 
have Biblical instead of philosophical or theo- 
logical definitions. It is the undiluted Scripture 
basis of its notes and comments that makes the 
Scofield Reference Bible so invaluable and so 
almost unique. 

Look, for example^t the definition of Predes- 
tination, which is given in a foot-note on Ephe- 
sians 1:5: " Having predestinated us unto the 
adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, 
according to the good pleasure of his will." 
Here is the definition: "Predestination is that 
effective exercise of the will of God by which 
things before determined by Him are brought 
to pass." 

Now a good many people think, and naturally 
enough from the mere meaning of the word 
"predestination" itself, that this word means 
the determining by God, in advance, of what 
is to be brought to pass. But God does not say 
so. He says, in His Word, that predestination 
is that exercise of His will by which He brings 



82 The Life Story of C. /. Scofield 



to pass those things which, earlier, He had de- 
termined. On this the Word of God is unmis- 
takable; therefore, for believers, that is final. 
If one still is skeptical as to this, he has but to 
search out for himself exactly what God says 
about predestination, by using the chain refer- 
ences to this which are brought together for his 
quick finding in the margins of the Reference 
Bible. 

Or notice the definition of Election as given 
in a note in comment on i Peter 1:2: " Elect 
according to the foreknowledge of God the 
Father." After a statement on the meanings 
of the Hebrew and Greek words in both Testa- 
ments rendered "elect," "chosen," etc., comes 
this brief, clean-cut, summarizing definition: 
"Election is, therefore: (1) The sovereign act 
of God in grace whereby certain are chosen 
from among mankind for Himself (John 15: 19). 
(2) The sovereign act of God whereby certain 
elect persons are chosen for distinctive service 
for Him (Luke 6: 13; Acts 9: 15; 1 Corinthians 
1:27,28)." 

Of course we must, as Dr. Scofield points out, 
be willing to leave out the lacuna, the inten- 
tional gaps in the Bible, the things left unsaid 
by God, and not attempt to form opinions or 



The Reference Bible Begun 83 



draw inferences as to those silences. "Don't 
infer doctrines in your Bible study," is one of 
the cardinal principles upon which Dr. Scofield 
has long worked and which he urges upon other 
Bible students. What does God say? — that is 
what you must find out. When God does not 
say anything on a certain subject, then leave 
it alone. 

For example, in studying the relation of God's 
foreknowledge to His predestination, the ques- 
tion naturally arises, as we follow the points 
back step by step, What does God " foreknow" ? 
But the Bible gives us no light on this. There- 
fore the only safe answer is, "I don't know." 
We must leave what constitutes God's fore- 
knowledge to Him, for He has not told us. 

The brief, easily read definitions now found in 
the Reference Bible did not come easily. First 
of all, there were constant prayer and seeking 
of divine guidance; an utter yet confident de- 
pendence upon the illumination of God's Spirit. 
Then there was an enormous amount of study, 
the leaving of no stone unturned in order to 
make sure of finding just what God has put 
there for us to find if we are willing to search. 
All this meant that often an incredible amount 
of time, and energy, and patient study, and 



84 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



faith-filled prayer went into the formation of 
some little two-line definition. 

But the editor of the Scofield Reference 
Bible was too reverent and too thorough to 
imagine that he alone had been taught of the 
Spirit, and this recognition of other scholarly 
and spiritual students involved the additional 
immense labor of the study of their writings. 
The result is that those definitions last, and 
they satisfy, and God can bless them, as He 
is doing, to multitudes of his children. 

The problem of what to put into the Refer- 
ence Bible, in the way of notes and comments, 
and what to leave out, was solved by prayer, 
as only it could be. But in addition to the su- 
pernatural illumination of the Holy Spirit, God 
was capitalizing the rich experience that pastor 
Scofield had had during his years of teaching 
the Bible in his Dallas pastorate. Those years 
of experience had shown him that there are cer- 
tain places in Bible study where many students 
and readers of the Bible become confused or 
are misled. On these passages, therefore, he 
knew that some comment was needed, and he 
acted accordingly, while at the same time 
using constant care not to let the Reference 
Bible become a mere commentary. 



The Reference Bible Begun 85 



The spiritual value of the Scofield Reference 
Bible has been well brought out by Dr. James 
M. Gray, of the Moody Bible Institute, in a 
characterization of Dr. Scofield's distinctive 
gifts. Dr. Gray has said: 

"The Scofield Reference Bible requires no 
more advertising than the juicy grass requires 
to draw the hungry sheep. . . . 

"When one attempts to describe Dr. Sco- 
field in the pulpit or the teacher's desk, that 
open-air meeting in Jerusalem comes into mind 
where 'they read in the book of the law of 
God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused 
them to understand the reading' (Nehemiah 
8:8). 

"This is Dr. Scofield's richest gift. He 
knows how to read the Word of God, and give 
the sense, and cause the people to understand 
the reading. He never writes or speaks in a 
haze. As was said of another, 'No trace of in- 
determinateness can be found in any of his dis- 
cussions on any subject.' His insight pierces 
the intricacies. 

"A Christian father, himself charmed by the 
Scofield Reference Bible, was pleased to see his 
young sons take it up night after night because, 
they said, 'it was so easy to find out things.' 



86 The Life Story of C. /. Scofield 



Thank God for a Bible expositor who can com- 
mand the interest of children ! 

"One of the officials of the Oxford University 
Press wrote me that in reading proof for another 
printing of that book he "found it almost im- 
possible to concentrate on the technical work 
because of the temptation to follow the great 
Bible truths so delightfully unfolded and con- 
nected by Dr. Scofield's genius.' And yet it 
was not Dr. Scofield's genius so much that did 
the work, but the 'unction of the Holy One' 
that came upon him for the service. . . . 

"When our beloved brother was revising his 
Correspondence Course he honored me with 
advance sheets and with the request that I go 
over his definitions of the great words of Scrip- 
ture for any suggestions that might occur to 
me. It was like a considerate father giving his 
lad the end of the reins to hold and letting him 
think he was driving the horse. 

"In the quiet of my study the work was 
done. No eye but that of God rested upon me; 
and as I followed in the definitions the unveiling 
of the Bible meaning of such words as 'adop- 
tion' and 'atonement,' and 'redemption' and 
'remission/ and 'pardon' and 'peace,' I am glad 
to be able to say that my heart swelled within 



The Reference Bible Begun 87 



me and that my emotions found outlet in the 
falling tear. A teacher who can accomplish 
that in one can never be forgotten. . . . 

"Dr. Scofield sees the inner truth and hidden 
glories of the Holy Scriptures as few Christian 
teachers do. To him the Bible from beginning 
to end is luminous with the splendors of Christ. 
And as his clear analysis and sublime logic unveil 
those splendors, his own joy and ecstasy in them 
become contagious." 

It is not strange that this Reference Bible has 
been called for by missionaries in foreign fields, 
with its notes and comments and references and 
paragraph headings translated into the languages 
in which the missionaries are working. Re- 
quests for permission to translate have come 
from many if not all of the larger mission fields. 
It is not known to Dr. Scofield or to the biog- 
rapher just what translations exist, except that 
he has been told from time to time that these 
have been made in various languages. Mean- 
time the English editions are carrying their 
blessing to missionaries the world over, and 
through them to both saved and unsaved of 
many tongues. 



VIII 



DRUDGERY AND GENIUS 

REALIZING that he could never give him- 
self as he should to the making of the 
new Reference Bible except by withdrawing 
from every other form of service, Dr. and Mrs. 
Scofield went abroad in 1904 to take up this 
work. Both were very weary, and Mrs. Scofield 
had never seen London, so they went there first, 
with no special purpose in mind except a bit 
of sight-seeing. At this time Dr. Scofield had 
no plans as to a publisher for the Reference 
Bible. He had not even thought of that im- 
portant detail in the work, not appreciating 
then, as he has since, how vitally important it 
was that the right publisher should be found. 

In Northfield he had become well acquainted 
with the older Mr. Scott of the well-known firm 
of religious publishers in London, Morgan & 
Scott. He welcomed , the Scofields to London, 
and took them with him for a little visit at his 
country place at Dorking. There Dr. Scofield 
told Mr. Scott quite fully about the work he 

88 



Drudgery and Genius 89 

had undertaken in planning a new Reference 
Bible. 

"Who is going to publish it?" at once asked 
Mr. Scott. 

"I do not know/' was the reply. "I have 
not taken that up. The first thing I must do is 
to get the material ready; then it will be time 
enough to think of a publisher." 

"But the question of the publisher is of the 
utmost importance," replied Mr. Scott. "And 
there is only one concern that ought to publish 
that Bible. My own house would be glad to 
publish it, of course; but we could not give it 
the world-wide introduction which it must have. 
The publishers of this Bible must be the Oxfoid 
University Press." 

"I do not know any one connected with the 
Oxford Press," said Dr. Scofield. 

"I can easily arrange that," answered Mr. 
Scott; and forthwith he took his friend to call 
upon Mr. Henry Frowde, then the head of the 
great Bible publishing house of Great Britain 
and the English-speaking world. 

Mr. Frowde was interested. He said he 
would consult Mr. Armstrong, then head of 
the American branch of the Oxford University 
Press. Mr. Armstrong was immediately enthu- 



90 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



siastic at the suggestion that this new Reference 
Bible be brought out by the Oxford Press, and a 
preliminary understanding was quickly reached. 
Mr. Frowde assured Dr. Scofield that, if he 
finally decided to place the Bible with them, 
they could readily arrange a proper contract 
for the publication, in the interests of each 
party. And so the publishing question was 
settled, God having fulfilled his word that "be- 
fore they call, I will answer" (Isaiah 65: 24). 

Dr. and Mrs. Scofield now went from London 
to Montreux, Switzerland, for quiet work and 
study. Here he fell desperately ill. It was evi- 
dently one of the several attacks that Satan 
began making upon him and this work of putting 
the riches of God's Word freely at the disposal 
of multitudes who otherwise would not have 
them. The story of the Adversary's persistent, 
desperate, but futile attempts to prevent the 
successful completion of the Scofield Reference 
Bible is a significant and impressive one. Satan 
is a terrible adversary; but, praise God, he is 
an "already defeated foe." 

For three or four months Dr. Scofield's illness 
prevented his doing anything further. Before this 
illness began he had given an order in Geneva 



Drudgery and Genius 



91 



for the making of several big blank books, one 
for each of the grand divisions of the Bible, 
such as the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, 
the Poetical Books, the Prophetical Books, and 
the rest. These books consisted of large blank 
pages, and his plan was to paste the text of the 
Scriptures from a good edition of the Bible on 
these blank pages, then make his references and 
annotations and comments on the margins. For 
the Bible text for this use the Oxford Press had 
given him half a dozen copies of their most 
accurate edition, of which the proof had been 
read thirteen different times. 

While he lay sick and helpless, utterly inca- 
pacitated for going on with his work, Mrs. Sco- 
field, unknown to him, pasted up the entire 
Bible in the big blank books that had come from 
Geneva. Upon his recovery he found this pre- 
liminary part of the work finished, and the books 
ready for him to go ahead. Broad four-inch 
margins on all four sides of the Bible text on 
each page of the books gave ample room for the 
necessary editorial work. This was but the be- 
ginning of the large contributions made by his 
devoted wife to the monumental work that lay 
ahead for both of them. 

Worn out from his illness, Scofield was far 



92 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



from strong when he now settled down to the 
real work for which he had been unconsciously- 
collecting material during the twenty-five years 
since his conversion, and even earlier. But the 
Lord was his strength, and was going to com- 
plete that which He had begun. 

In making the chain references, which were to 
be one of the central features of the new Bible, 
the very first mention of every great theme or 
subject had first to be located; then patiently 
all the other most important references to the 
same theme throughout the entire Bible, Old 
Testament and New, must be searched out and 
brought together. Each theme or subject was 
searched out, carried through the entire Bible, 
and completed before another theme or subject 
was taken up. All this involved a concentra- 
tion and continuance and infinite painstaking 
in detail of labor that probably no one can 
imagine who has not done some such work. 
"May the Lord spare you that kind of work/' 
said Dr. Scofield fervently to a friend years 
afterward. 

These chain references were not written into 
the margins of the big books at first; they were 
carefully brought together and written out by 
the compiler and editor on separate sheets of 



Drudgery and Genius 



93 



paper; and then they were transferred from 
those sheets into the big books themselves. 
And fully half of this work of entering them 
finally into the books was done by Mrs. Scofield. 

The conscious purpose that Dr. Scofield had 
in doing this work comes out in his characteristic 
statement: "If you're going to do it, and do it 
for God, there is only one way — not a smooth, 
easy way, but as unto the Lord." 

For example, he found that in making accu- 
rate and illuminating subheads for the para- 
graphs of the Reference Bible in the Gospels, 
there must be a careful study of all the parallel 
passages before any subhead could be safely de- 
cided upon for any paragraph in any one 
Gospel. Parallel passages bearing on that para- 
graph in another Gospel might alone determine 
the correct subhead. This patient sort of search 
and painstaking comparing Scripture with Scrip- 
ture characterized the making of the Reference 
Bible at every point. This it was that pre- 
vented rapid work, that added almost incal- 
culably to the labor, and that enabled God to 
bless the work as He has done. 

On that first foreign trip for the making of 
the Reference Bible the introductions to the 
larger or grand divisions of the books of the 



94 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



Bible were written, the introductions to each 
of the sixty-six books, and the analyses of each 
of the sixty-six books. This first retirement 
abroad in order to give undivided attention to 
the work lasted for eleven months, nine of which 
were spent in solid work at Montreux. 

About this time the First Congregational 
Church in Dallas was having a difficult time, 
becoming somewhat disheartened on account of 
the long absence of the one who was nominally 
its pastor, though it had been clearly under- 
stood that he must be free to give his whole 
time to this work; and the people of the church 
urged Dr. Scofield to return and let them have 
a little of his time, assuring him that he would 
still be free to go on with his labors on the Bible. 
At the same time the problem of the providing 
of money for the continuing of his sojourn 
abroad had arisen. He says frankly to-day, in 
looking back at that particular time in his work, 
that he suffered a weakening of his faith as to 
God's purpose to provide the money and see 
him through this tremendous task. And so he 
came back to America, and took up preaching 
and pastoral work in Dallas. The Lord had, 
indeed, provided all the money needs hitherto — 



Drudgery and Genius 



95 



even when "the bottom of the barrel" had more 
than once just about been reached, the Lord's 
provision always arrived before there was any 
real suffering. 

It was not long after resuming preaching and 
pastoral work at Dallas that Dr. Scofield realized 
that it was impossible to attempt to go on with 
his Bible work and church work together. He 
had somewhat of a breakdown in health again. 
This time he spent a winter at the Sanitarium 
at Clifton Springs, New York, — not so much as 
an invalid as because of the splendid facilities 
there for the best food and air, and medical 
attention when needed, and at the same time 
freedom to go on with his work. 

He took up quarters there that gave him 
every facility for working, and with Miss Ella 
E. Pohle, who had done invaluable secretarial 
work for him for years in connection with the 
Bible Correspondence Course, he again entered 
upon the arduous labors of the Reference Bible. 
Mrs. Scofield and Miss Pohle worked together 
in putting the multitudinous chain references 
into place on the pages of the big books that 
were gradually constituting "copy" for the final 
work, after Dr. Scofield had carefully prepared 
these references himself on separate sheets. 



96 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



It must be remembered that every entry of a 
reference in this chain reference plan required 
three separate lines. First came the topic or 
theme, such as "Gospel" or "Inspiration." 
Then came the chapter and verse reference for 
the next succeeding passage of Scripture where 
that same topic or theme occurred. Finally 
came, in parentheses, the references for the 
first mention of that topic or theme in Scripture, 
and its last mention. For example, on the 
passage in 2 Kings 6:6, where Elisha makes 
the axe-head to swim, you will find the chain 
reference entry in the margin: "Miracles (Old 
Testament), verses 5-7, 18-20; 2 Kings 13:21. 
(Genesis 5:24; Jonah 2:1-10)." 

Now multiply this work for each entry by 
the number of such entries you find in the 
Old Testament and the New in the Scofield 
Reference Bible, recalling that each such entry 
was written out first at least twice by Dr. Sco- 
field himself, and then by those who were help- 
ing him to transfer the references to the final 
"copy" for the printer, and you begin to have 
a hint of what this task involved. And that 
was only one detail in the great work. 



IX 



THE DEBT TO SCHOLARSHIP 

AFTER a winter at Clifton Springs it be- 
• came clear to Dr. and Mrs. Scofield that 
they should go to Europe again. This time 
Oxford was the destination; and a two years' 
stay in that wonderful English university town 
followed. Here the treasures of the Oxford 
libraries were fully at the disposal of the man 
who was making himself a Bible scholar by mas- 
tering the Bible scholarship of the world. He 
was by no means content to limit his studies and 
researches to constructive and believing Bible 
scholarship. He covered the whole field of such 
scholarship, whether friendly or unfriendly to 
the Bible. He wanted to know at first-hand 
all that the critics claimed to have done, and 
he was open to any light that their scholarly 
researches might, known or unknown to them- 
selves, throw upon the Word of God. He found 
Prof. Dr. William Sanday, an outstanding schol- 
arly critic, gracious in his readiness to confer. 
So also with the more extreme critic, Prof. S. R. 

97 



98 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



Driver. Of the conservative Bible scholars 
abroad, Dr. Scofield gratefully acknowledges his 
indebtedness to Profs. A. H. Sayce and David 
Samuel Margoliouth, of Oxford, and to Mr. 
Walter Scott, the eminent Bible teacher. 

It was Dr. Scofield's deliberate purpose to 
put himself under obligation to the entire field 
of modern Bible study and scholarship. All 
through his labors on the Reference Bible he 
was consulting, either by correspondence or 
personal interview, the leading scholarly and 
spiritual Bible students of different lands. The 
destructive criticism and the new theology, both 
emanating from Germany, were in no sense 
congruous with his plan, and were wholly re- 
jected as out of harmony with the great historic 
faith founded upon two thousand years of 
Christian experience and study. 

The title-page of the Reference Bible gives 
the names of the consulting editors to whom, 
in the Introduction, the editor acknowledges 
special indebtedness and who worked with him 
in counsel, criticism, and guidance. These con- 
sulting editors were Henry G. Weston, D.D., 
LL.D. (deceased), President of Crozer Theo- 
logical Seminary; James M. Gray, D.D., Dean 
of Moody Bible Institute; William J. Erdman, 



The Debt to Scholarship 



99 



D.D., author of "The Gospel of John," etc.; 
W. G. Moorehead, D.D. (deceased), Professor 
in Xenia (U. P.) Theological Seminary; Elmore 
Harris, D.D. (deceased), President Toronto 
Bible Institute; Arno C. Gaebelein, author 
of "Harmony of Prophetic Word," etc.; 
Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. (deceased), author, 
editor, teacher. In addition to a great deal of 
correspondence with these consulting editors, 
three meetings of the group were held ; and one 
can well imagine what interesting conferences 
these meetings must have been. The last of 
the three, reviewing the whole work, was held 
at Princeton, New Jersey, when several of 
the editorial board spent many days together, 
with access to the great theological library 
there. 

In the remarkable introduction to the Refer- 
ence Bible, which is, by a characteristic touch 
of the editor's unconventionality, labeled " (To 
be read)," Dr. Scofield says: "The editor dis- 
claims originality. Other men have labored, he 
has but entered into their labors. The results 
of the study of God's Word by learned and spir- 
itual men, in every division of the church and 
in every land, during the last fifty years, under 
the advantage of a perfected text, already form 



100 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



a vast literature, inaccessible to most Christian 
workers. The editor has proposed to himself 
the modest if laborious task of summarizing, 
arranging, and condensing this mass of material. 

"That he has been able to accomplish this 
task at all is due in very large measure to the 
valuable suggestion sand co-operation of the con- 
sulting editors, who have freely given of their 
time and the treasures of their scholarship to 
this work. It is due to them to say that the 
editor alone is responsible for the final form of 
notes and definitions. The editor's acknowl- 
edgments are also due to a very wide circle of 
learned and spiritual brethren in Europe and 
America to whose labors he is indebted for sug- 
gestions of inestimable value. It may not be 
invidious to mention among these Prof. James 
Barrellet, of the Theological Faculty of Lau- 
sanne; Professors Sayce and Margoliouth, 
of Oxford; Mr. Walter Scott, the eminent 
Bible teacher; and Prof. C. R. Erdman, of 
Princeton. 

"Finally, grateful thanks are due to those 
whose generous material assistance has made 
possible the preparation of a work involving 
years of time and repeated journeys to the 
centres of Biblical learning abroad/' 



The Debt to Scholarship 101 



It is to be remembered, therefore, that every- 
thing of importance in the Scofield Reference 
Bible represents the consensus of leading minds 
of Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, 
together with the treasures of Bible study worked 
out by similar students during the past century 
or so, as preserved in the best libraries of Europe 
and America. God led him to the right men; 
men who lived in Hebrew and Greek; and from 
these he eagerly received invaluable and judi- 
cious counsel. Going to Biblical centres abroad, 
he made sure that he gained possession of all 
the facts he needed to have. At Lausanne, 
Switzerland, for example, he reveled in the books 
in the great library there, a library begun by 
Calvin, some of whose books are still on its 
shelves. 

Another statement in the Introduction of the 
Reference Bible is significant: "The last fifty 
years have witnessed an intensity and breadth 
of interest in Bible study unprecedented in the 
history of the Christian Church. Never before 
have so many reverent, learned, and spiritual 
men brought to the study of the Scriptures minds 
so free from merely controversial motive. A 
new and vast exegetical and expository litera- 
ture has been created, inaccessible for bulk, cost, 



102 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



and time to the average reader. The winnowed 
and attested results of this half-century of Bible 
study are embodied in the notes, summaries, 
and definitions of this edition. Expository nov- 
elties and merely personal views and interpre- 
tations have been rejected." 

Did the sojourns in Great Britain and else- 
where in Europe make any real contribution to 
the Scofield Reference Bible, apart from the 
opportunity they gave of freedom from inter- 
ruption in the work? Could not this Reference 
Bible just as well have been made at home 
without stepping foot out of the United States? 
The question has been sincerely asked, and the 
facts here given answer it. 

It is true that most of the explanatory 
and interpretative comment represents material 
that was familiar to the comparatively few 
soundly instructed and well-grounded students 
of the Word of God in our country and abroad. 
But the work done on the Scofield Reference 
Bible includes far more than this. It is a result 
that could have been produced only after an 
exhaustive study of books, and conferences with 
men, both friendly and unfriendly to the Word 
of God, both believing and unbelieving, both 



The Debt to Scholarship 103 



conservative and radical, so that every state- 
ment of the editor was finally made only after 
an intelligent and scholarly familiarity with the 
whole realm of modern Bible research. When 
a positive statement is made in the notes it is 
made in full recognition of the negative positions 
on that same point. All this made possible an 
orientation of the editor and gave the work a 
background, an atmosphere, a sometimes tacit 
evidence of familiarity with all view-points 
while presenting only the true view-point, 
which could never have been brought to pass 
without the travel and contact and research 
that went into it. 

Those to whom the notes and references, the 
introductions and paragraph topics in the Sco- 
field Reference Bible seem very simple — and 
they are simple and easy reading — do not always 
realize how much costly study and time and 
energy went into the mere deciding what to 
leave out. The editor read and read, and re- 
jected and rejected, for cause. He had long 
personal interviews with Bible scholars with 
whom he fundamentally disagreed ; but he drew 
out from them all that they could give him, and 
then went back to his constructive, not destruc- 
tive, work, infinitely the better equipped. No 



104 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



man could sit in a pastor's study or a theological 
library in any one country alone and do this. 

It will be remembered that the lifelong train- 
ing and predisposition of Dr. Scofield, in litera- 
ture and history and the law, had been making 
for the scholarly mind and the habits and 
methods of true scholarship. He had a magnifi- 
cent Greek tutor away back in the days when 
he had been preparing to enter college. Later, 
after entering the Christian ministry, he made 
such progress in the study of the Bible tongues 
as was possible to a busy pastor. Despite 
the attainments thus acquired, Dr. Scofield, 
in his work upon the Reference Bible, always 
refused to settle any question linguistic in its 
nature upon his own conclusions unsupported 
by the great conservative authorities living 
and dead. 

The scientific attitude of mind appears in this 
comment of Dr. Scofield: "If I find that I would 
like to have a word mean a certain thing, I pull 
up! "Hold on, now,' I say to myself, 'I must 
see if it does mean that.'" And more than 
once, in making the Reference Bible, he spent 
a week on a single word, determined to know 
the facts before permitting himself to come to 
any conclusion. 



The Debt to Scholarship 105 

An unexpected and very distinguished recog- 
nition of the learning and the scientific scholar- 
ship that have characterized Dr. Scofield's entire 
life, and that went into the making of the Ref- 
erence Bible, was received in January of 1919 
in a letter from the Societe Academique d'His- 
toire Internationale, notifying Dr. Scofield of his 
election to membership. The late President of 
this Society, Frederic Mistral, was one of the 
great poets of France. A medal of membership 
accompanied the election, and the following di- 
ploma, sent to Dr. Scofield, is a formal statement 
of the honor: 

Societe Academique d'Histoire Internationale 
Fondee en 1903 
Declaree conformement a la Loi du 

ier Juillet 1901 — No. 154,142 
50, Boulevard St. Jacques, 50, Paris 
President d'Honneur Perpetuel: 
Mr. Frederic Mistral 
Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur 
Diplome de Membre Fondateur decerne 
a Monsieur le Dr. Cyrus I. Scofield 
Paris, le 6 Fevrier 1919 

Le President 
Ofricier de la Legion d'Honneur 
Vicomte de Faries 

Le Secretaire General Officier 
de l'lnstruction Publique 



106 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



There are, of course, certain merely theolog- 
ically trained minds that never do, never can 
distinguish learning unless it is explained and 
couched in technical and impressive terms. 
Dr. Scofield came to the Bible with a mature 
mind, technically trained through the habit of 
close investigation. He studied the Bible for 
thirty years. He checked, verified, or corrected 
his own conclusions by conference with schol- 
arly, Bible-saturated men of God, and by careful 
study of the writings of the saintly and spiritual 
as well as of the critical and unbelieving. Then, 
satisfied as to the conclusions of truth, he asked 
God that he might be simple, like the Bible 
itself, and make no display of what he calls 
"even the poor learning ,, that he himself might 
have. As a successful lawyer, he had been 
trained, especially in jury practice, to be simple 
and clear. He has never had any ambition to 
be impressive; he has had a great longing to 
help God's people and feed Christ's sheep. The 
result was the Scofield Reference Bible as it is 
to-day. 

In spite of the modest disclaimer by the 
editor, and in spite of his frankly avowed and 
honestly maintained purpose to bring together 
for the benefit of the many the learning and 



The Debt to Scholarship 107 



research of the few, it must be remembered that 
the Scofield Reference Bible is by no means 
merely an eclectic work. It is also the ripe 
result of thirty years of unremitting personal 
study by its editor, whose methods, as have 
been seen, were utterly unusual in tracking 
down and digging out for himself, at no sparing 
of personal cost, under the direction of the 
Holy Spirit, the treasures of God's Word. 



X 



SATAN'S ATTACKS DEFEATED 

OF course Satan tried desperately, over and 
over again, to block the work upon, and 
prevent the publishing of, a Reference Bible 
which he could see was going to mean regret- 
table inroads upon his domain in human lives. 
The attacks upon Dr. Scofield's bodily health 
were an indication of this; and during the stay 
at Oxford there were two more serious illnesses. 
But Satan can go only so far and no farther. 
The Lord intervened, and each time Dr. Sco- 
field's health was restored and labors were 
resumed. 

When a family problem in America required 
a cabled call to Mrs. Scofield to leave England for 
home, both she and her husband found spiritual 
fellowship and comfort in a little gathering of 
Plymouth Brethren with whom they had wor- 
shipped while in Oxford, and their Christian 
friends there interceded earnestly in their behalf. 
The day after special prayer in the meeting of 
the Plymouth Brethren concerning this matter, 

108 



20 10] 



GENESIS 




all 



Sarah he said. B. 
given thv brother a 
ces of silver behold. | 

1 covering of the eves ! 



with all other thus she was re U M lt6 

17 So Abraham prayed unto God . 
and God ^healed Abimelech and his Jon 3 
wife- and his maidservants and' 
thev bare children | ' jn , 



18 For thf Lord had fast closed 
up all thf wombs of the house of 
Abimelech because of Sajah Abra 
ham's wife 



Th 



CHAPTER 31 

h of f&aat 



AND 
he r 



Lord visit-d Sarah as 
•said and th Lord did 
unto Sarah as he had spoken 

2 For Sarah "conceived and bare 
Abraham a sin in his old age at 
the set time of which God had 

3 And Abraham called the name 
of his son that was bom unto him. 
whom 'Sarah hare to him -Isaac 

4 And Abraham circumcised his 
son Isaac being eight days old as 
God had commanded him 



5 And Ahr 
jvears old., when 

6 And Sarah s 



am was an hundred 



7 And she said Who would hav 
said iinto Abraham that Sara 
should have given children -uck ' fc 



8 And the child grew, and 

feast the same day that Isaac 
weaned 

The bondwoman and her 



'thy bondwoman 
'hath said unto 



be called 
bondwom. 



ir in Isaac shall thy seed 
iso of the son of the 



t he rn a rn mg. and, lo^k_bread^ and 

Hagar putting it on her shoulder 
and the child, and sent her away 
and she departed and wandered in 
the wilderness of Beer sheba 

1 5 And the water was spent in the 
bottle and she cast the child under 

16 And she went and sat her 
down over against him a good way 
off as it were a bowshot for she 
said Let me not see the death of 
the child And she sat over against 
him and Uft jp her voice and 

17 And God heard the voice of 



■ Sarah tvpe of grace, "the freewoman " and of the "Jerusalem which is above * 
deepen 17 is ii Gal. 4 n Ji 

i typical in a fourfold way ( 1 ) of the Church as composed of the spiritual 
children of Abraham (Gal 4 28) (2) of Christ as the Son "obedient onto death" 
tGen 22 i io, Phil 2. s-8 (3) of Chnst as the Bridegroom of a called out bride 
(.see Gen 24 . also. "Church." Mt 16 is and rets ) (4) of the new nature of the 
believer as "born after the Spirit" (Gal 4 m) 



A page-proof of the New and Improved Edition of the Scofield Reference 
Bible, showing Dr. Scofield's corrections and comments. 



Satan's Attacks Defeated 109 



Dr. Scofield went with his wife to London and 
Liverpool, whence she started across the Atlantic 
on a Cunard steamship. After her boat was a 
day or two out at sea, another cablegram reached 
her husband, bringing the welcome news from 
home that the need had passed and all was well. 

A wireless message was at once flashed to the 
outgoing steamer and caught it six hundred 
miles at sea, so that Mrs. Scofield might have 
the good news before traveling farther. She 
was safeguarded all the way in her journey, 
and thus again an attempted interruption of 
Satan came to naught. 

That summer Dr. Scofield rejoined his wife in 
America, and together they went on with the 
work at Lake Orion, Michigan; but he found 
it difficult to work there in view of the summer 
conferences at that well-known spot and the 
many interruptions sure to come to such a man 
as himself. So it was not long before they were 
again on their way across the ocean, this time 
for another and final stay in Switzerland, at 
Montreux. 

It was on this second and last trip to 
Montreux, lasting eight or nine months, that 
the work on the Bible was actually finished. 
This was in the year 1907. 



110 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



And now came another of those unmistak- 
able attacks by Satan which he plainly hoped 
would prevent the giving of this work to the 
world. 

The great books that had been slowly growing 
into finished copy for the printer — containing 
first the most accurate English Scripture text 
in existence, around which had been built up, 
little by little, and with infinite care and pains- 
taking and lavish disregard of time, the results 
of a generation of personal study and the labors 
of a multitude of others, — were carefully packed 
in boxes by a carpenter in Montreux. These 
boxes were securely fastened by iron bands pass- 
ing entirely around them, and they looked like 
the emigrants' boxes one often sees in the steer- 
age of ocean steamers to be deposited at Ellis 
Island off New York. Dr. Scofield saw these 
put aboard the tender carrying baggage to the 
steamer which lay in the harbor at Boulogne. 

The ocean voyage went by uneventfully. 
The steamer was within one day of New York 
City when somehow Dr. Scofield felt strongly 
impressed with the desire to see if his precious 
boxes were safe in the baggage hold of the steamer. 

With one of the steamship officers he went 
to satisfy himself. The boxes were not there. 



Satan s Attacks Defeated 111 



With a sinking heart Dr. Scofield realized that 
the boxes might easily have been left in the 
tender, on the other side of the Atlantic, and then 
have been carried back to Boulogne. A new 
search was carefully made, without result. The 
baggage men were called in and the boxes 
were accurately described to them. They said 
that no such boxes had been put aboard with 
the luggage on this boat! 

Now Dr. Scofield and his wife prayed earnestly 
together. And then it "occurred" to him that 
it might be worth while to search among the 
luggage of the emigrants in that boat. This 
search was now made, in the steerage, and 
there the boxes were found, safe and sound. 

Notice this : if the boxes had not been looked 
for and located before the boat had reached 
New York, they would undoubtedly have been 
put off at Ellis Island with the luggage belonging 
to steerage passengers. There they would have 
been unclaimed, and they might never have been 
found. For Dr. Scofield, after reaching New 
York and finding that the boxes were not in the 
vessel in New York Harbor, would naturally 
have had Boulogne searched for them, and they 
would never have been found there. Satan's 
plans might have succeeded; but he is "an 



112 The Life Story of C. 7. Scofield 



already defeated foe," and God only awaits our 
claiming his defeat, in simple faith in the name 
of Jesus, against every fresh attack that he 
makes. 

When the precious copy for the new Bible 
was safely in America it was taken to Dr. Sco- 
field's summer home near Northfield, at Ash- 
uelot, New Hampshire. Here Dr. Scofield and 
his family were then living in primitive fashion, 
in tents, with one big tent as their living quar- 
ters. One Sunday morning — it was Mrs. Sco- 
field's birthday — they were in one of the smaller 
tents when they heard a crackling noise. Hurry- 
ing out, they found the big tent a sheet of 
flames. But the manuscript of the Bible was 
not in that tent; it was in a little workshop 
near by. Had the wind been in the opposite 
direction, the precious manuscript could easily 
have gone up in smoke. But God was in charge, 
and again it was saved. It was too late to 
save the tent, and a great deal else; but Satan's 
fresh attempt against the manuscript was 
defeated. 

And now the time was come for actually 
printing the great work. The type for the 
Bible was imported from the Clarendon Press 
in Oxford, England. Dr. and Mrs. Scofield 



Satan s Attacks Defeated 113 



went to New York and took apartments there, 
to insure close personal supervision of the work. 

It was not best to let the big books contain- 
ing the manuscript go all at once to the printers, 
so pages were cut from these books, and about 
twenty pages at a time were sent to the De Vinne 
Press for composition. As the proofs began to 
come back, Mrs. Scofield would act as "copy- 
holder" to her husband, she reading aloud from 
the original copy, he carefully correcting the 
proof. This, of course, was after the proof- 
readers of the De Vinne Press had done their 
own careful work. During one of the hottest 
of summers, that of 1908, husband and wife 
toiled through this monumental labor for the 
Word of God. Their "day" was from about 
five o'clock in the morning until it was too dark 
to see at night. But they had long been at 
school in lessons of patience, and of painstaking, 
and of persistence. 

One day a friend met Dr. Scofield in New 
York, by appointment, upon another matter, 
and they went together for a walk on Fifth 
Avenue. The friend asked concerning the prog- 
ress of the work on the Reference Bible. Dr. 
Scofield abruptly came to a full stop in their walk 
as he said: "At eleven o'clock last night I came 



114 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 

upon those impressive words, "The End/ Yes, 
the work is finished — that is, in the sense in 
which any human work can ever be finished; 
for I am confident that there is only one work 
ever undertaken upon this earth which has in an 
absolute sense been finished, to which nothing 
can ever be added and from which nothing can 
ever be taken away. That is the finished work 
of Christ." 

So the final proof was "passed." Then the 
eager waiting for the last sheets to come from 
the press, go to the binders, and come back the 
completed product. That day came; and with 
what gratitude to the Heavenly Father these 
two children of His handled their first copy of 
the Scofield Reference Bible, the reader who has 
followed this story of their God-planned, God- 
guided, God-illuminated, and God-energized 
work needs no writer's help to imagine. 



XI 



AS HIS FRIENDS KNOW HIM 

IT is a steep climb up the New Hampshire 
mountain roadway, severely testing the hill- 
climbing powers of an automobile, to get to 
" Crestwood," the summer home of Dr. C. I. 
Scofield at Ashuelot. But the hilltop view, 
after you have reached it, is worth the climb. 
From the house itself, and the garden round 
about it, one looks off over the beautiful Con- 
necticut Valley with a sense of satisfying height, 
and distance, and sky and clouds and the glories 
of God's world. East Northfield, rich with 
memories of the ministry of D. L. Moody, is 
seen in the distance. Birds and flowers are 
round about in abundance. A bit of a cabin, 
a hundred yards or more from the house, forms 
a secluded study for Dr. Scofield, and there one 
finds chosen treasures of his rich library, marked 
and well-worn Bibles, and jottings on sermons 
and addresses. 

There are evident reasons for the unusual 

catholicity of Dr. Scofield's temperament, in- 
ns 



116 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



terests, and relationships. Love of nature, love 
of men, love of scholarship, love of hard work, 
love of God and the Word of God — all these 
have combined to make the man as his friends 
know him. People who see him only as he has 
been ever since his conversion, with his simplic- 
ity of life and habits, would not realize that he 
was brought up in an extremely ritualistic way, 
as an Episcopalian. But this gives him a sym- 
pathy with that side of life that he might other- 
wise never have had. Yet when working on the 
monumental labor of his life, the Scofield Ref- 
erence Bible, in Oxford, England, he and Mrs. 
Scofield found a welcome spiritual fellowship in 
a little group of Plymouth Brethren who wor- 
shipped there. 

When this latter fact was mentioned in these 
biographical chapters as they were first pub- 
lished in the columns of The Sunday School 
Times, a Pennsylvania pastor-reader of that 
paper wrote to the biographer: 

"This naturally raises the question: How far 
did Dr. Scofield and Mrs. Scofield share the 
peculiar beliefs of these people? On which of 
the many points which Plymouth Brethren set 
up to justify them in maintaining a separate 
denominational existence were they in accord?" 




Dr. Scofield as He Is To-day 



As His Friends Know Him 



117 



Dr. Scofield's own answer to this question 
will be read with interest by many: 

"lama minister of the Presbyterian Church, 
South, accepting in all sincerity the standards, 
and happy in the fellowship, of that branch of 
Presbyterianism, which seems to me very careful 
as to the doctrinal company it keeps in these 
easy days. But being such and so, I found it 
for certain personal reasons most convenient to 
worship usually while in Oxford with a little 
group of worthy middle-class Englishmen of the 
sect — they would warmly deny being a sect — 
of the so-called 'Open Brethren.' Just as in 
my wide-spread ministry I have worshipped with 
pretty nearly all of the other sects. 

"I love the Baptists, but have never been 
asked, after a week in a Baptist pulpit: 'On 
which of the many points which Baptists set up 
to justify themselves in maintaining a separate 
denominational existence were Mrs. Scofield and 
myself in accord?' I gathered that 'Brethren' 
are emphatic for separatism — with their idea of 
which Mrs. Scofield and I are not in accord. 

"But since every one of the Protestant sects 
had its origin in Separatism, based on doctrinal 
discord, mostly of the hair-splitting variety, and 
since Separatism was never once referred to in 



118 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



that simple, godly gathering in an old lumber- 
yard office in Oxford, I no more felt constrained 
to raise the point than when I am worshipping 
with my Baptist, Methodist, or Dutch Re- 
formed brethren. I have, indeed, had for many 
years an occasional happy Lord's day with the 
church of which this Pennsylvania reader is the 
justly esteemed pastor, and I do not to this 
day know to which branch, limb, or twig of our 
manifold Presbyterianism his great church be- 
longs. But I love that church, and I love him." 

And again — "You're a better Jew than I am," 
said a Jew to Dr. Scofield in all heartiness. 

When he was asked recently what was his 
present denominational relationship, he wrote 
the following characteristic reply: 

"I was ordained thirty-seven years ago as 
pastor of the First Congregational Church of 
Dallas, Texas. I remained in that pastorate 
until my removal to Northfield, Massachusetts, 
at the invitation of Mr. D. L. Moody and the 
First Congregational Church of that place. 
After seven years of happy work there, I re- 
signed the active pastorate to begin the prepara- 
tion of the Reference Bible and to finish the 
Correspondence Course. 



As His Friends Know Him 



119 



"I had been aware that the Congregationalist 
denomination was rapidly changing its stand on 
certain doctrinal questions of great importance 
to my understanding of the Christian faith, 
but I am not controversial by nature, and was 
too intensely interested and occupied in Bible 
study to give close attention to current discus- 
sions. And so it happened that, at last, I lifted 
my face from my work and found that the de- 
nomination, in whose fellowship I have found 
great and true men of God, had resolutely 
moved to positions to which I could not follow. 
It was, therefore, heartening to look about me 
and find that I was in the very midst of a people 
to whom the old definitions, the old methods of 
expression, sufficed — the Southern Presbyterian 
Church. I reflected that they were the very 
people who, equally with the Congregationalists, 
knew me best, and I asked the Paris, Texas, 
Presbytery of that denomination to take me 
into its membership. And they did, with many 
gratifying expressions of welcome, and there I 
have been restful and happy. 

" There is not a trace of bitterness in my 
heart in all this, for my memory holds too 
many instances of kind things said and done 
by my Congregationalist brothers to leave any 



120 The Life Story of C. 7. Scofield 



room for anything but gratitude and esteem; 
but it remains true that the designation 'Con- 
gregationalism would not now describe me. It 
stands for certain liberties which I do not allow 
myself, and for a certain attitude toward the 
Bible and historic Christianity which is not my 
attitude." 

There is something in Dr. Scofield that draws 
people close to him. As a veteran of the Con- 
federate Army, having fought through the Civil 
War, he surprised certain people in Dallas, 
Texas, during his memorable pastorate in that 
great Southern State. On a certain Memorial 
Day he was invited to speak to the veterans of 
the local "Camp" of Confederates. And about 
the same time he was asked if he would address, 
on that Memorial Day, the local Post of the 
Grand Army of the Republic. This would have 
seemed a dilemma to some men. But Pastor 
Scofield went to the heads of each of these organ- 
izations and asked whether there would be any 
objection to having the members of both asso- 
ciations of veterans meet together, in his church, 
for a joint service. Those in charge said there 
would be no objection, though some doubt was 
expressed as to whether the men would come. 
But when the invitation was extended the men 



As His Friends Know Him 



121 



did indeed come, in two separate bodies, and 
the meeting was splendidly attended. Scofield 
gave a straightforward message, including the 
Gospel; and as a result of that service some of 
the veterans, meeting with this true pastor in 
his study afterward, were led to the Lord Jesus 
Christ as their Saviour. And joint meetings of 
the Confederate and the Union veterans have 
been continued since that time on Memorial 
Day. 

One of the first impressions I ever had of Dr. 
Scofield was as to the ease with which people 
could get to him. It was at the time of the 
great Prophetic Conference held in Chicago in 
February of 1914, less than six months before the 
storm of the world war broke. He gave a fear- 
less Scriptural message on the assurance in God's 
Word that world-wide and permanent peace can 
never come save by the coming of the Prince 
of Peace, though that message was laughed at 
by the general public and newspaper reporters 
at that time. I think this was the first time I 
had ever seen or heard Dr. Scofield, and I hoped 
I might get his autograph in my personal copy 
of the Scofield Reference Bible. 

At the close of one of his addresses I sought 



122 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



him out, and found that others had the same 
desire. And I supposed that a man of his promi- 
nence, so much in demand for public addresses, 
must be more or less annoyed by the impor- 
tunity of strangers coming to him and "both- 
ering" him for an autograph. Even then he was 
about to leave the church to catch a train. But 
he greeted every individual who came up to him 
at the close of that meeting, even as he greeted 
me, then an entire stranger, as though we were all 
doing him a personal favor by letting him write 
in our Bibles! I think I have never seen such 
genuine courtesy and unaffected Christian love 
in a conference speaker or Bible teacher as I saw 
in him at that time, and as I have seen in him 
many times since. 

When Dr. Scofield was at Northfield one of 
the students served him as his "chore boy." 
That student is now pastor of a church in New 
England, the Rev. Robert Clark, of Lyndon, 
Vermont; and his tribute to Dr. Scofield con- 
firms what so many others have come to know 
of the man. Mr. Clark writes: 

"I was intimately acquainted with him when 
he was president of the Northfield Bible Training 
School. From 1900 to 1903 the school was open 
to men ; I attended it during these years. That 



As His Friends Know Him 123 

I loved and revered the doctor as a teacher goes 
without saying. He is my spiritual father, and 
I owe to him, under God, more than I owe to 
any other man. He brought me into the light 
and liberty of the Gospel, and gave me methods 
of Bible study that have proved fruitful ever 
since. 

" But I was even more closely associated with 
the doctor than as a student, for I worked for 
him for a year as his * chore boy,' and spent 
the summer with him at his summer camp. 
During that time I was much in his company, 
driving him to his appointments, or to the 
train, or riding out in the afternoons. In this 
way I came to know him very well, and I can 
truly say that the closer contact deepened my 
love and respect for him. 

"I found that Dr. Scofield was a companionable 
man. He never seemed to feel any distance be- 
tween himself, the man of wide experience, and 
a raw country youth; he talked as freely to me 
as to his guests. He was always ready to give 
me aid and to clear up some difficulty in my 
Bible study. 

"I found that Dr. Scofield was a humble man. 
He was teachable. He was as ready to listen 
to the experience of the humblest believer as to 



124 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



the mature saint, and he believed that he could 
learn from both. 

"I found that Dr. Scofield was a man of prayer. 
He prayed about everything, the little things as 
well as the big things: all were carried to the 
throne of grace. Two things in this connection 
made a deep impression on me. 

"In the doctor's study, when I agreed to stay 
with him for the summer, we knelt down and 
he prayed for God's blessing on our relations as 
master and servant. 

" One morning, when I went over to the family 
tent to get orders for the day, I heard him 
praying. I paused, and I heard my name 
mentioned; he was praying for me, that I 
might have a pleasant trip down to the 
village. That was characteristic of his life and 
practice." 

This man who has helped such countless mul- 
titudes loves to commend others who are help- 
ing their fellows. He one time wrote a letter 
to the office of The Sunday School Times, speak- 
ing with discriminating and hearty appreciation 
of the special writing that was being done, in 
different departments of that paper, by vari- 
ous members of its staff. Then he added: 



As His Friends Know Him 



125 



"Thank God for the gifts, but how important 
to remember that while the Holy Spirit makes 
gifted Christians, 'dividing to every man sev- 
erally as he will/ yet it is the blessed Lord who 
assigns the place of service of the men thus en- 
dowed. And just as there is no self-choice of 
gift, so there is no self-choice of the place and 
sphere of service in the gift. When I find a 
man ministering His gift, in the right place, I'm 
just happy — oh, yes, and helped." 

Dr. Scofield loves all nature — not only men 
and women and children, but the whole created 
world, still so beautiful in spite of what Satan 
and sinners have done to mar God's work. I 
recall how he once pointed to a glowing, blazing 
bed of poppies, and asked if I did not think 
their brilliant color was wonderful against the 
dark green of the fields and the trees in the 
background. 

A little bird bath has been cut from the nat- 
ural stone, just outside the "Crestwood" house, 
for the countless little friends of the air that 
the Scofields love. 

And to hear Dr. Scofield talk about St. Fran- 
cis of Assisi, in his love of nature, is a memor- 
able experience. He read aloud to us page 



126 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



after page from that old Christian's writings, 
dwelling upon the nature-love there. Thus: 
"This perfect lover of poverty [St. Francis] per- 
mitted one luxury — he even commanded it at 
Portiuncula — that of flowers; the Brother was 
bidden not to sow vegetables and useful plants 
only; he must reserve one corner of good 
ground for c our sisters, the flowers of the fields. 5 
Francis talked with them also, or rather he 
replied to them, for their mysterious and gentle 
language crept into the very depth of his heart." 

In a Bible study on the fourteenth chapter 
of John's Gospel Dr. Scofield has said, com- 
menting on our Lord's words, "I go to prepare 
a place for you": "He is giving me an experi- 
ence of it in this beautiful world of variety. 
Why should I want to live in a marble mansion 
cold and fine? I want to live in nature, in a 
place which exactly responds to my complex 
nature." And it is a conviction of his that we 
shall find heaven filled with such beauties as 
God has already given to us in the world of 
nature so lovingly provided for His children now 
and here, only, of course, then infinitely more 
beautiful and more wonderful. 

No one who is as human as this man of God 



As His Friends Know Him 



127 



could be lacking in a keen sense of humor. And 
no one can long be with Dr. Scofield without find- 
ing contagious evidences of his love of fun and of 
wit. Like all persons who really enjoy humor, 
he can see a joke on himself as well as on others. 
He tells one such, which occurred when he was 
preaching at a conference. His son was a little 
fellow of five or six years at that time, and 
insisted on sitting on the platform with his 
father. For a while the youngster played 
quietly with his father's watch, which had been 
given to him to keep him quiet. Then, without 
warning, the boy crossed the platform and 
handed the watch to his father, who was in the 
midst of his sermon. Dr. Scofield was by no 
means near the conclusion of his address, but, 
to the surprise of the presiding officer, he hastily 
closed his message. When asked later about the 
abruptness with which he had brought his ser- 
mon to an end, he explained that he thought his 
allotted time was up, and that his young son had 
been sent in this way to inform him ! 

He likes to tell of an experience he had when 
he was a private in the Confederate Army, and 
had gone off with some fellow-soldiers to rob an 
apple orchard. As they were in the midst of 
their looting, a Confederate officer passed down 



128 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



the road, and, looking across the fence into the 
orchard, asked the boys what they were doing. 
There was nothing to answer, except to explain 
that they were helping themselves to the apples ; 
and they stood in fear and trembling as to what 
would come next. The officer drew his sword, 
passed it over the fence to young Scofield, and 
said laconically, "Spear me one, will you?" 
The relief was intense. 

Another Confederate reminiscence which ap- 
peals to Dr. Scofield's sense of humor is in con- 
nection with a formal dinner that he attended, 
to which Senator Roscoe Conkling had been 
invited. The Senator failed to appear until 
quite late, and then came, in immaculate even- 
ing dress of course, to join the rest who had 
been expectantly waiting his arrival. "In his 
oracular and ponderous way," says Dr. Scofield, 
"the great statesman explained his delay: 'The 
senior Senator from Massachusetts [Sumner] has 
just been making his annual attempt to enact 
a law to abolish the distinction made by God 
Almighty between black and white/ 99 

Readers of The Sunday School Times may re- 
call a characteristic letter from Dr. Scofield, 
written to the Editor at the time the latter' s 
church was looking for a new pastor. A high 



As His Friends Know Him 



129 



standard both of orthodoxy and of pastoral 
abilities was set up by that church; and Dr. 
Scofield wrote about the matter as follows: 

"Is it faith, or is it presumption in this pagan 
age, for your dear church to ask so much of the 
ministry of the day? I have read, of course, 
with perfect delight the resolutions of your 
church as to the faith necessary to be held by 
the pastor whom you seek. But when I look 
upon the ministry of the day and the material 
actually at hand, I am dismayed and over- 
whelmed by the contrast. The coming of the 
Lord draws near, and we shall soon have with 
us again the Apostle Paul — I would put him 
first among those whom I would recommend, 
and I can think of no other who would fill all 
these requisites, considering I myself have passed 
the age of pastoral work/' 

Deepest intensity of conviction is as charac- 
teristic of this man as his lighter and tenderer 
side. Those who attended one of the Bible 
conferences at Crescent City, Florida, in recent 
years may recall the vehemence with which Dr. 
Scofield said one day from the platform, speaking 
of the tragic devastation that the Higher Crit- 
icism has wrought among the ministers of this 



130 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



generation: "I would rather spend Sunday 
morning in a saloon than sitting in a church 
under the preaching of a modern Higher Critic !" 

Looking back over his own lifetime experi- 
ences, this veteran saint says there have been 
two great epochs in his own life. "The first was 
when I ceased to take as final human teachings 
about the Bible and went to the Book itself. 
The second was when I found Christ as Victory 
and Achievement. 5 ' 

His study and teaching of the Victorious Life 
have blessed many. His epigrammatic putting 
of this truth goes to the heart of it: "Christian 
experience, and the experience of the Christian, 
may be two very different things." By this Dr. 
Scofield is reminding us that normal "Christian 
experience" of the New Testament sort is always 
victorious. But the experience of many a Chris- 
tian is anything but victorious. For "Christian 
experience is wholly the result of the Producer 
of Christian experience — the Holy Spirit." And 
this Bible teacher has rendered a great service 
in insisting that every Christian has the Vic- 
torious Life. For the Victorious Life is simply 
Christ Himself ; and every Christian has Christ — 
or else he is not a Christian ; " if any man have 



As His Friends Know Him 131 

not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" 
(Romans 8:9). But many a Christian who, 
because he is a Christian, has Christ indeed 
within his heart, is yet failing to yield wholly 
to Christ and to believe wholly in His suffi- 
ciency, and therefore is sadly failing to have a 
personal experience of victory over sin. Because 
he has Christ he has the "Victorious Life," but 
he is not letting that Life, or Christ, work in 
overcoming power. In other words, this is the 
oft-repeated counsel that the Christian "possess 
his possessions," and believe in and enjoy the 
"all things" that God has given him in Christ 
Jesus (1 Corinthians 3: 21). 

In ceasing to take as final human teachings 
about the Bible, and in going to the Book itself, 
Dr. Scofield has labored for many years in the 
spirit of the true scholar. That always means 
the drudgery of infinite care and tedious pains- 
taking. As this Life Story has pointed out, Sco- 
field as a boy and a young man, before he ever 
knew the Lord, was given of God a tempera- 
ment and a habit of work that may well be 
described by that definition of "the scholarly 
temperament — that rare combination of pro- 
found insight, sustained attention, microscopic 
accuracy, iron tenacity, and disinterested pursuit 



132 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



of truth, which characterizes the great scientific 
discoverer or the great historian/' It was some 
thirty years of this sort of study, research, and 
hard work that made the Scofield Reference 
Bible what it is to-day in clearness, dependable- 
ness, simplicity, and compactness. Writing to 
a friend about these chapters in his Life Story, 
after they had been appearing in the columns of 
The Sunday School Times, Dr. Scofield said: 
"Charles started in with the word 'amazing' as 
characterizing a life which seems to me chiefly 
one of drudgery, but now I am 'amazed' to see 
how skilfully he makes my very drudgery inter- 
esting." Drudgery is always interesting — to 
other people who look on! Only the few find 
it interesting enough to go in for it themselves, 
and to keep at it, in season and out of season, 
until the work is really done. 

But with these characteristics of what may 
be called the sternly scientific make of mind, 
the brilliant insight into truth, lucid simplicity 
of statement, and powers that have made this 
man a marked character whether in the world 
or in the Church of Christ, there are also a sim- 
plicity and a faith that are childlike in their 
beauty and tenderness. 



As His Friends Know Him 133 

His love of St. Francis of Assisi has already 
been mentioned. He told a little group of 
friends one day that he counted St. Francis his 
own particular saint. And then he went on to 
explain that, as some one else has said, every- 
body ought to have a special saint — "not to 
take the place of Christ, of course, but to inter- 
pret Christ down to me. As Paul says, 'Be ye 
followers of me even as I am of Christ' — but 
test me by Christ every time, Paul was careful 
to urge." 

St. Francis' love of birds "found" Dr. Sco- 
field. With deep feeling he read aloud this 
passage from "Sabatier's Life of St. Francis": 
"Full of joy, he was going on his way when, per- 
ceiving some flocks of birds, he turned aside a 
little from the road to go to them. Far from 
taking flight, they flocked around him as if to 
bid him welcome. 'Brother birds,' he said to 
them then, 'you ought to praise and love your 
Creator very much. He has given you feathers 
for clothing, wings for flying, and all that is 
needful for you. He has made you the noblest 
of his creatures; he permits you to live in the 
pure air; you have neither to sow nor to reap, 
and yet he takes care of you, watches over you, 
and guides you.' Then the birds began to arch 



134 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



their necks, to spread out their wings, to open 
their beaks, to look at him, as if to thank him, 
while he went up and down in their midst strok- 
ing them with the border of his tunic, sending 
them away at last with his blessing/ 5 After 
reading this Dr. Scofield said quietly: "I be- 
lieve that if we were filled with the Holy Spirit 
the birds would come close to us/' 

"Abba, Father," says Dr. Scofield, "is the 
affectionate realization of God's fatherhood. 
And so one exclaims, in a flood of tenderness 
and love, 'Oh, Father!' or, 'Dear Father/ 
This is said, of course, only in the Spirit. But 
how commentators have bothered and puzzled 
over that expression, 'Abba, Father.'" 

The depth and simplicity of Dr. Scofield's 
faith come out in the comment he has made on 
the narrative, in the "Life of St. Francis," of 
that godly man's healing of a loathsome leper. 
The story is a beautiful one, and after reading 
it aloud to friends Dr. Scofield said, with enthu- 
siasm: "Well, now, that doesn't stumble me. 
It would be strange if such a man could not 
heal lepers, by the power of God." 

The beauty of true Christian mysticism is 
recognized in his comment on this saint: "Fran- 
cis is of the race of the mystics, for no inter- 



As His Friends Know Him 



135 



mediary comes between God and his soul." 
Christian mysticism, he points out, is what has 
been called "immediacy" — that is, that nothing, 
not even prayer, is needed to bring the believer 
into the presence of God. This is certainly the 
teaching of the New Testament concerning the 
union with Christ which is true of all Christian 
believers. Not nearness, but union. We are 
not with Christ, but in Christ; he is not with 
us, but in us. Tennyson knew this when he 
wrote, 

"Closer is He than breathing, and 
nearer than hands and feet." 

Dr. Scofield's childlike trust in God's love and 
the sufficiency of God's grace to give His chil- 
dren anything comes out in the story he tells 
of a personal experience of answered prayer. 
Some good Christian people would quite misun- 
derstand this story — unless they heard Dr. S co- 
field himself tell it, and saw the light in his face, 
the irresistible humor in his smile, and the 
Christian faith back of it. 

With his advancing years he very much wished 
for an automobile. He was telling a minister 
friend about this one time, and how, with his 
desire for a car, he decided to pray for it. 



136 The Life Story of C. 7. Scofield 



"And," he went on, "God heard my prayer and 
answered it, and he sent me an automobile." 

"Is that so?" said the minister who was lis- 
tening to the experience. "I never thought of 
praying for an automobile," the minister con- 
tinued. "But as I think of it, I believe I could 
be of greater service to the Lord, in the Chris- 
tian ministry, if I had one. I could use my 
time to better advantage; I could make more 
pastoral calls; I could get more work done. 
I believe I may start praying for one myself." 

And then Dr. Scofield, as he tells the inci- 
dent to-day with a twinkle in his eye, surprised 
his minister friend. "Well," he said quietly, 
"if you believe that you could render better 
service as a Christian minister with an auto- 
mobile, and believe that you ought to ask God 
, for it for that purpose, you do so. But I didn't 
ask God for an automobile in order to render 
better service. I told God that I had worked 
pretty hard all my life, and that I was getting 
on in years, and that I wanted an automobile 
as a toy, a plaything, something in which to 
rest and enjoy myself. And God sent it to me." 

Whether the minister saw the point is not 
recorded. But that there is a point there, and 
a very real one for God's children, cannot be 



As His Friends Know Him 



137 



doubted. God loves to give his children good 
times. But how few of his children really be- 
lieve this! 

Many a friend has had reason to know of the 
great tenderness of heart in this man of God. 
He has a genius for friendship; the light that 
comes into his eyes as he greets a friend is won- 
derful. Even those who have been new-comers 
in his circle of acquaintances notice this. I re- 
member seeing him, one day, walking up the 
street when he did not know that I was near 
him. As he walked along he noticed coming 
toward him a man whom he had only recently 
met. Dr. Scofield stopped short, lifted up his 
head, reached out his hand to his acquaintance, 
and a great light of friendship shone on his face 
as he spoke to this man whom he had already 
taken into his heart. 

We were talking together one day, in his rus- 
tic study out under the trees in the New Hamp- 
shire summer home, and he had been speaking 
of all that belongs to the believer, in Christ. 
As he came to the close of what he was saying, 
he added, "And then we come to the inef- 
fable — I" He stopped, and a radiant smile 
broke over his face. His eyes closed, and 



138 The Life Story of C. I. Scofield 



without any further word he prayed quietly: 
"We thank thee, O Father, that Jesus does 
it all." 




GREYSH INGLES 



4 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 579 372 t 



